Several glimpses of joy with Shaun Tan

Like a child with a firefly I feel warmed, brightened by the fact that there exists a West Australian Gen X dude, and he’s absolutely revered for his art and writing.

I love that the bounds of his fandom have swelled so large that his Sydney bookstore event could not actually be held at the bookstore and, instead of Kinokuniya Sydney, had to be at the Sydney Masonic Centre.

I love that it made us look like a Shaun Tan cult, which, in fact, we might be. I love that there were rows and rows of us all crammed in to see this beloved illustrator (The Arrival, The Rules of Summer… many more titles, and most recently, Hometown) – and that this happened in the year 2026 when I’m told over and over that no one reads, that publishing is in dire straits, that people care only for summaries, doom scrolling and screentime.

A double-page spread from Hometown by Shaun Tan.

I love that when he drew for us – a big cactus cat – he drew with a pencil, just the same implement I picked up when I was a child that I still use every night as an adult.

And I love that in my row, the two people at my right were listening like A-students trying to win extra credit while scribbling notes in a fancy notebook and on a tablet with a stylus respectively.

Shaun Tan was treated like Australia’s own Miyazaki. He’s generous, so generous that all his illustrations have so much to look at – tiny creatures, massive creatures, weird plants, machinery.

And he was generous with his time and his answers and spent so much time with his signing queue that it was quite moving, really – reminded me that he did this back when I had him sign Tales of Outer Suburbia. He drew a flower for me, and a flower for my partner, and carefully silvered the middles, and added little fluffy bits. And no one would have thought less of him if he’d just written his name, but he did not do this.

So the signing queue got the best of me this time for Hometown, but few things he mentioned wedged firmly into my mind, to be accessed later when I want to feel the joy of them too:

The tactile feeling and immediacy of charcoal and oil pastel

Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal

Gary Larson comics, specifically the one where a kid has found a human head in a bottle at the beach and is proffering it at show and tell

Sesame Street puppets and how, all being so different, they teach tolerance for difference

When your sleeping pet lets you play with its feet

The clouds over Western Australia. Hometown by Shaun Tan is out now (Allen & Unwin).