Picture books - stories and pictures entwined

[gmw]

I was going through some of my books looking for ideas for the January "Rainbow of Reading" nominations for the New Leaf book club., and I came across a real favourite of mine that I cannot really nominate, because to get the most out of it will require a colour tablet. But, I thought to myself, that doesn't mean I can't at least start a thread about picture books - books that use both images and words to tell a story. I consider these to be distinct from graphic novels or comics etc. ... perhaps as literary books are distinct from other genres. The easiest way to describe what I mean is to show you with one of my all-time favourites...

Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. A collection of 15 short tales, each a strange mix of tall-tale, urban myth and imagination run-riot and each accompanied by several drawings ... or perhaps the drawings are accompanied by tales. In many of the stories the two are really inseparable.

The look-inside feature at Amazon will show you some of what I mean.

I have the hardcover of this book, but that look-inside preview linked above seems to demonstrate that it should work okay on a colour tablet.


Has anyone else here read this? Can anyone offer recommendations for similar work?