The Bird King: An Artist's Notebook

Gr 3 Up—A collection of sketches, drafts, and scanned ephemera from the artist who created The Arrival (2007) and Tales from Outer Suburbia (2009, both Scholastic). The initial section, "untold stories," is a series of visuals and captions, sometimes inspired by the accompanying turn of phrase and sometimes only illuminated by it, like a particularly enigmatic New Yorker cartoon. The "book, theatre, and film" section contains images familiar to readers of Tan's other works, while the "drawings from life" and closing "notebooks" sections are excellent examples of the skill and practice required of an inventive illustrator. Not only can one see the breadth of Tan's technical ability here, but the reproduction of the originals is also top-notch; the marginalia of its origins intact with creases, scuffs, erasures, and signs of assembly all photographically preserved. These show the work and the physical reality of getting to an end product, as well as revealing, by implication, the gradual process of creative invention. While not so much a graphic novel or an illustrated book, this is an excellent archive of what might be found if one peeks into the recesses of an artist's portfolio. For those interested in illustration as a career, it could be a superb, if daunting, inspiration.—Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, NH