'When the dice is always loaded against you how do you move forward?
'Join us for an extraordinary journey to a world of imagination where origami boats take you on an ocean voyage, giant fish host musical interludes, and parades pass you by. This is the story of a young girl living inside her bedroom and how she conquers her fears and anxieties, finally embracing hope and taking control of the world that has always been around her.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Unit Suitable For
AC: Year 5 and Year 6 (NSW Stage 3)
Picture books have traditionally been seen as part of the early years of primary school. They are often used to engage and support young readers as they are learning to read. Many contemporary picture books are, however, multilayered and are often appropriate for different ages. This unit of work aims to stretch and develop the traditional concept so that, depending on the author, illustrator and complexity of themes, picture books can be for everyone.
A small child awakes to find blackened leaves falling from her bedroom ceiling, threatening to quietly overwhelm her. ‘Sometimes you wake up with nothing to look forward to …’ As she wanders around a world that is complex, puzzling and alienating, she is overtaken by a myriad of feelings. Just as it seems all hope is lost, the girl returns to her bedroom to find that a tiny red seedling has grown to fill the room with warm light. Shaun Tan’s latest creation, The Red Tree, is a book about feelings – feelings that can not always be simply expressed in words. It is a series of imaginary landscapes conjured up by the wizardry of Shaun Tan’s masterful and miraculous art. As a kind of fable, The Red Tree seeks to remind us that, though some bad feelings are inevitable, they are always tempered by hope.
Source: Publication Synopsis Reading Australia
Teaching notes from publisher's website.
This is affiliated with Dr Laurel Cohn's Picture Book Diet because it contains representations of food and/or food practices.
| Food depiction |
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| Food types |
|
| Food practices | n/a |
| Gender | n/a |
| Signage | n/a |
| Positive/negative value | n/a |
| Food as sense of place |
|
| Setting |
|
| Food as social cohesion | n/a |
| Food as cultural identity |
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| Food as character identity | n/a |
| Food as language | n/a |
'Shaun Tan’s 2001 picture book The Red Tree features a nameless, redheaded protagonist wandering through a series of surreal, strange and overwhelmingly dark landscapes. Tan himself, together with his commentators, has characterised The Red Tree’s contents as “absurd,” yet this term has not been defined, nor have any connections been traced between the themes of the text and one of the most important thinkers of the absurd: the twentieth-century French philosopher Albert Camus, whose notion of the absurd is explicated in The Myth of Sisyphus. This article argues not only that Camus’ notion of the absurd provides insights into Tan’s The Red Tree, but also that Tan’s work can help readers develop an understanding of Camus’ philosophy. It focuses on three significant aspects of Camus’ work that serve to unite these two writers, namely the journey of self-explication one undergoes after sensing the absurd, strangeness, and hope.'
Source: Springer.
'This article analyses a selection of contemporary children’s visual texts (for economy and specificity ‘contemporary’ is taken to mean the current century), covering a cross-section of age demographics to better understand how the texts depict female characters suffering with mental illness. It examines these primary texts not only to see how such characters are represented but also to see whether they either bolster or challenge the idea of the female being viewed as the male's ‘Other’. A brief historical and cultural contextualisation of the relationship between mentally ill females and the male-centric profession of modern psychiatry is followed by a close analysis of four primary texts, analysing visual narratives of mentally ill female characters in two picture books, an illustrated book and a graphic novel, noting how contemporary visual depictions contrast with early ideas and images supporting the nineteenth-century feminisation of madness. The conclusion is that, from the limited selection of texts analysed, contemporary children’s visual texts represent a clear contrast to the historical image of the frail and winsome madwoman. The findings are that they do not uphold the image of the female madwoman as Other.' (Publication abstract)
