2008 children's fantasy, illustrated short stories loosely based on
suburban life.
The framing is strictly the boring life of endless suburbia in a
country too hot for grass, where they insist on growing grass anyway.
(Tan is Australian.) The stories often seem to start conventionally:
we had a foreign exchange student come to stay. I had an argument with
my brother about what was just beyond the last page of the city map.
But the illustrations make it clear that things have already gone a
bit sideways, and they rapidly become more so.
There's some moralising, but it's gentle, and there's nothing like a
bad person here; everyone's redeemable, perhaps. Not a whole lot
actually happens… or maybe it has already happened. There's a
Twilight Zone-ish sense that the universe has mechanisms that we
don't and won't understand, but mostly they work out right.
Not at all my usual fare, but if I read one children's book this
decade I'll be happy for it to have been this one.
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