The rabbits came many grandparents ago

Front and back covers

The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan is one of those picturebooks that leaves you gaping from a mixture of shock and admiration. It was the third picturebook illustrated by Shaun Tan to reach my bookshelf and to be featured on this blog.  I've featured The Lost Thing and The red tree. 

Both Marsden and Tan are Australians and through this picturebook make a very clear statement about cultural awareness, expertly creating an allegorical tale of colonialism. The Rabbits  has been used in secondary schools since it was published in 1998 in areas of the curriculum that include English, Art and Technology, Philosophy, History, Geography and Environmental Studies.  But has it been used in ELT?  Let's see if I can convince the readers of my blog to consider its possibilities.

I've taken a photo of the front and back covers together - the image is so powerful: a huge ship with a pointed, harpoon-like prow. Napoleon-like creatures stalk around on pin legs, we can't quite make out what they are... though from the title they have to be rabbits. That strip of red on the back cover is actually a collage, a piece of red cloth, fraying at the edges.  Could it be from the flags? Or from the invader's coat?  The words on this fraying piece read:

"The rabbits came many grandparents ago.

They built houses, made roads, had children.

They cut down trees.

A whole continent of rabbits ..."

The front endpapers

The endpapers are a calm blue-lilac.  Clean water, the home to graceful, long legged birds.  What a contrast to the front cover.  Is this the land these invaders have arrived at, that they will soon be invading? 

The half title page

The dark brown half title page imitates the format of a well known flag, with pen-inked squiggly writing and some sort of shield in the centre, superimposed over a map.  You can peer and peer, but nothing can be discerned or made out.  

The title page comes next: a ripped sheet of paper, covering that blue-lilac bird-filled lake. We can see that some of the paper has begun to soak up the water, turning the white into a creeping grey, the birds are moving away from us, their backs are turned and they are all looking to the right, they've seen something we can't see yet.   The white paper  is both a cover as well as a vehicle for the pond life, as flowers are growing from its edges and dragon flies hum towards the dedications. The title font, as on the front cover, is not quite normal, the 'e' has a strange wave under it and the 't' is uncharacteristic.  Are these letters from a past, letters that have changed over time to those we know and recognize today?

Opening 1

Opening 1 confirms our haunch, the birds are indeed fleeing, if the book had sound we would hear their calls of alarm, we would hear the snakes hiss in warning.  What is that strange black chimney in the horizon? What are the fossil-like shapes in the dark cave behind the snakes?  Does Tan want us to think of the time these fossils have taken to form? An age-old land.   We read an invisible narrator's words, "The rabbits came many grandparents ago". 

Opening 2

This illustration is of an immense land, home to tiny creatures, birds and insects.  It has been marked by the wheels of a strange machine, which we can just make out on the horizon.  Two worlds meet and wonder at each other: "They looked a bit like us ..."  they were creatures, they had ears and tails, but they wore clothes and had strange machines... "There weren't many of them. Some were friendly."

And soon more came, and the old people warned us all... "they came by water."  And we see the front and back cover as a spread, even more frightening now as we have begun the story, we know the significance of these strange creatures. 
We are told and shown how different they are:

Opening 5

"They didn't live in trees like we did. They made their own houses." This particular spread gives us information in layers. The slightly lighter blue strip at the top is the original layer and belongs to the narrators. They are sitting in their trees, watching their world change. The darker blue is a superimposed layer, the result of the rabbits: we see both the buildings being built and what they will look like. The buildings are like puzzles, already spewing black smoke. Everything is mechanical, even the rabbits seem so, the symmetry emphasizing the mechanical way they changed the world.  

Opening 6

Not only were the rabbits' homes different, but "...they brought new food, and they brought other animals."   The illustrations show us massive grass eating sheep, machines dressed in lambs' wool.  Cows, already marked for the butcher's knife.  The land is covered in these strange creatures, either in the fields or pilled high on spindly locomotives.  More words tell us that "... some of the animals scared us."  But that's not all, "... some of the food made us sick" (the last three words turned upside down, as though rolling over with belly ache).  The illustration shows a rabbit giving a bottle to the aboriginal creature collaged upon another illustration of a dried up water bed, littered with flapping, gasping fish. 
There was no stopping the rabbits, they spread across the country. There was fighting, "but there were too many rabbits"

Opening 8

"We lost the fights." Those fossils we saw at the beginning, denoting an ancient world, dominated above by the rabbits' flags, the aboriginals, prisoners in their age old world, defeated below. 
The atrocities continue: "They ate our grass. They chopped down our trees and scared away our friends... "

Opening 10

I find this spread the most shocking: hundreds of kites, with baby animals inside, being pulled by strange air machines.  Mother creatures, as though dancing, hands raised towards their children, you can almost hear them moaning.  And the rabbits, big and black, their vertical backs turned against the mothers. They have red and yellow eyes and the peacock feather pens mirror these evil eyes, dripping with the blood red ink they have just used to write on the certificates. These contain the verbal text of this page, each word on a separate sheet of paper, as though being spoken in jerks of distress,  "and . stole . our . children."

Opening 11

"... everywhere we look there are rabbits."  The statue in recto, a large rabbit, the motto MIGHT = RIGHT.  A grey automated world, polluted and literally filled with rabbits, right to the very edges of the page.  Can you see the only aboriginal creatures on the steps of the statue?  The fallen kite? The rabbits holding masks? The gigantic curved chimneys, sucking in the blue sky and puffy clouds? A curious image, a frightening image.
"The land is bare and brown and the wind blows empty across the plains. Where is the rich dark earth brown and moist? Where is the smell of rain dripping from the trees? Where are the lakes, alive with long legged birds?"
A final verso page shows a small cameo illustration against a black background.  Two solitary creatures, a rabbit and an aboriginal. 

Back verso

"Who will save us from the rabbits?".  The land is wasted, littered with bones, lost and broken pieces of machinery and empty bottles.  A small water hole reflects the stars in the sky.  Can we read this as an image of hope?  Is there any hope left? If we turn again to the back endpapers, we return to the bird-filled lake of cool lilac-blue water. A distant memory?  A possible future?


When I first saw this picturebook I got goose bumps, and every time I look at it I get that goose bumpy feeling. It's quite something.  A simple verbal text alongside such complex visual images, makes for much interpretation.  There are many issues here and therefore lots of opportunities for talk and discussion.  If you are teaching English through history, could this picturebook be of use? If your programme includes such topics as multiculturalism, could it be of use? Or, if you happen to have a group of interested teenagers, keen to talk and discuss, keen to put the world to rights, could this book be of use?  I'd say 'yes' on all three occasions.   

And the winner is ... The Lost Thing

This month I've decided to write about picturebooks that have been made into films.   It was this year's Oscars which prompted me to write about The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan, one of my favourite picturebooks, and which won the Oscar for best Short Film (animated). Pretty amazing! The film took nearly ten years to make and was released on 10th November 2010, it arrived in my Portuguese post box, fresh out of Australia just in time for my birthday on the 18th!   

I got so excited when I saw it had been nominated for an Oscar,  funnily enough alongside another pictuebook The Gruffalo.

Here's the trailer ...

... and Shaun Tan's webpage about the film, with some fabulous illustrations.  Now it's won an Oscar it's available through itunes, but you can also purchase it online directly from Madman Australia, which I think is so much more exciting!

The film is only 15 minutes long, but comes with some wonderful extras, including a commentary by Shaun Tan and another by the director,  Andrew Ruhemann.  There's also a delightful little, hardback field guide called, What miscellaneous abnormality is that? which features all the wonderful invented creatures in the original picturebook and film.  A truely delightful little package.

Is the film better than the book?  No!  They are both brilliant, but in different ways.  After watching the film I went back to the picturebook and it seemed different.  There was so much more to look at, and all over again.  The film had made certain illustrations clearer, bits I'd overlooked became massively important and steeped in meaning.  It was goosepimply brilliant.  

And so the picturebook?  

The lost thing is subtitled, A tale for those who have more important things to pay attention to. I didn't notice the subtitle for ages, the front cover is busy, but it's there neatly tucked under the large title. There is so much to look at that it's easy to miss. 

Tan always uses the peritext eccentrically, and The Lost Thing is no exception.  The front and back covers are full of clues as to what the book will bring, but many of these clues only become clear once we’ve read through the picturebook more than once.  The front cover shows us the two main characters, the boy and the Lost Thing, standing next to a lamp post with a sign "NO LOITERING" hanging from it.  Small pink, puffy clouds are in the sky, a repeated image through out, and a wiggly arrow is part of the title, another repeated visual image which appears inside.  

The back cover shows us simultaneously both sides of a post card from suburbia,  the setting for the story. It's been written by someone called Shaun to his friend Pete, who appears in the picturebook.  The postcard has a "CLEARED" stamp on it, as well as a load of other smile provoking bits and bobs.  This becomes clearer once we've read the picturebook. There's a tram ticket, from the Melbourne Metropolitan, stuck in the top corner of the cover, and a delightful strip of visual paraphernalia which illustrates the barcode, along the bottom. Much to look at and wonder about.

The endpapers show us rows and rows of decorated bottle tops, for the boy in the story is a bottle top collector!  They are all cream with black squiggles against a background of sketches of the characters in the book in a deep umber.   There's one blue bottletop with a puzzling fluffy cloud painted on it.

The main character, a young boy, narrates a matter of fact summer holiday story about finding a metaphorical Lost thing - a huge, red, teapot-like creature with crab claws that acts like a pet dog.   “It all happened a few summers ago, one rather ordinary day by the beach. Not much was going on. I was, as usual, working tirelessly on my bottle-top collection and stopped to look up for no particular reason. That’s when I first saw the thing.” In the double spread above, you can see the Lost Thing down on the beach, and there are close ups in the four cameos on the right hand side. Can you see the traffic lights with four lights?
The story is of the journey the boy takes to find a home for the creature.  The illustrations are full of detail and thought provoking, in particular when seen alongside the minimal, fairly dry text. Tan used his father’s old physics textbooks to make the backgrounds, and they bring a wonderfully sunburned brown, textured feel to the pages, as well as hundreds of reasons to keep looking and pouring over the illustrations.    In many places there are little expressions which seem perfectly placed ... I'll leave you to find them! 

Most spreads have a comic book-like layout, with several frames on a page illustrating different sequential events.  Tan uses very moody colours, dark browns and reds, with grey and black, against the cream coloured physics notes, but every now and then, even though the colours themselves don’t change something becomes luminous bringing a light heartedness to a page.
The boy takes the creature to his friend's home to discover what it is. They are both stumped and sit on the roof drinking tea and trying to sort things out.  It's a great spread, and you can see Suburbia behind them with all the houses with red roofs, all exactly the same. 

Later, the creature eats Christmas decorations in the boy's back shed, while the boy thinks what to do.  They take a  trip to The Federal Department of Odds and Ends whose moto is "sweepus underum carpetae", and where the boy is required to fill in hundreds of forms.  It is there that  he is given a card with a wiggly arrow on it as a clue to where to take the creature.    They wonder around Suburbia following signs with arrows, (and there are some amazing signs!) and eventually the boy does find a home for the Lost Thing, it  “… seemed to be the right place, in a dark little gap off some anonymous little street.  The sort of place you’d never know existed unless you were actually looking for it.”  

This “right place” is a Dali-like world, with buildings resembling aqueducts, in a warm umber and every space is filled with weird creatures, all different but all happily together.  The boy leaves the creature there and goes “home to classify his bottle top collection”.  On the facing page we read: “Well, that’s it.  That’s the story. Not especially profound, I know, but I never said it was. And don’t ask me what the moral is.”

But the final spread shows us the boy in the tram, much like the other characters in the illustrations, sitting silently staring forward, and through a comic book-like sequence, one tram becomes three, then twenty, then sixty.  Everyone and everything is the same.  These words almost close the story:

 “I see that sort of thing less and less these days though.”

“Maybe there aren’t that many lost things around anymore.”

“Or maybe I’ve just stopped noticing them.”

“Too busy doing other stuff, I suppose.”

But in true picturebook fashion there is one more illustration: a closing page, framed like the others in physics book paper, it's one of the characters from the story, the one who encouraged the boy to look for a proper home for the Lost Thing, who gave him the card with the arrow on it, a sort of janitor-like creature.  He's cleaning the floor, as though tidying up at the end of the book.

If you look closely you'll see that Shaun Tan has stuck some special thanks to friends and colleagues on the last page, as well as reference to three artists':  Edward Hopper, John Brack and Jeffery Smart, all inspirational to his work.

Collin's Street 5pm by John Brack 1955

In particular if you look at Collin's Street 5pm by Brack, you'll notice the similarity to a street scene in Tan's picturebook. 

It's taken me days to write this post as I wanted to describe the picturebook in detail, but it's impossible.  There is so much there to look at and puzzle over that what ever I describe I am doing it an injustice.  It's a picturebook to ponder over, return to and to talk about with friends, colleagues and peers. It's perfect for teenagers, and accompanied by the film will provide excellent opportunities for discussion - but do use both the book and the film, they compliment each other - nothing beats the turning of pages and the going back and forth.  

I'm not a great Oscar fan, but isn't it fabulous that something so humungous can actually bring a delightful thing like The Lost Thing into so many more people's lives.  

There are far more picturebooks-cum-movies produced than I ever imagined.  I'm sure a number come to mind immediately ... Where the wild things are; The Polar Express are two such examples, both made into feature films. 

Here are some links which talk about picturebooks made into films: 

Children's books into films

Picture book this: and I thought it was just a movie

Small children's books have been made into full-length movies
and finally ... Trevor Cairney, whose blog I follow, also got excited about the Oscar award for The Lost Thing, and updated a post he'd already written about Tan.  Here's the link.