The Singing Bones: Inspired by Grimms’ Fairy Tales

Shaun Tan

Allen & Unwin

Australian artist and writer Shaun Tan creates worlds you fall into; places and spaces you must revisit. Whether working wordlessly (The Arrival) or telling a story through words and images (The Red Tree) his work is memorable, brilliantly evocative and he is telling stories for children and adults – also for adults to help children out with, sometimes for children to explain to adults.

Here he tells the central premise of 75 of the loved and known Grimms’ Fairy Tales with single shots of papier-mâché and quick-dry clay sculptures. And just a Précis-sketch of text.

It’s an updated version of the work he supplied for Philip Pullman’s German edition of 50 of Grimms’ tales – Tan’s own book added 75 fresh images/stories.

Tan’s magical worlds draw you in, always – no pun intended there. But here we have single cells, single shots; stark and startling images that convey the tone, or key ingredient of a whole story. Just a paragraph or three augmenting them. In his previous books he’s had more than one image helping to tell a story, or images only to take the place of words. These shots of 3D images are wonderful to ponder, intriguing, creepy, weird – beautiful.

He’s a master.

And this is latest set of his masterpieces.

You might need to guide a child through it – or wait until you deem them old enough. In the mean time you can hopefully cope with these horror-fables yourself. It’s a book for adults that you’ll find in the children’s section. A book for the whole family to immerse themselves in, to talk about, read together, to ponder.