Crenshaw's Books & Decks

I hurried up to my local bookshop to buy this book as soon as it came out, as there were some autographed stickers and a bag given as a token, and I am a fan of Tan's artwork.

Rules of Summer is a book about the summer in the life of two young boys. Tan depicts what a summer feels, underline feels, to these two kids. The illustrations are not about what they did or what happened to them, although that is also clear in some of them, but is more about how these kids felt and interpreted what happened to them, and what the highlights of their summer in their memories were. If you depart from this principle, the book immediately makes sense and the narrative pops up. For example, this is perfectly clear in the images associated to: "Never eat the last olive at a party" and "never leave the back door open overnight". The rest of the illustrations work in a similar way, but some of them are more difficult to understand or decipher than others.

The images in the book are wonderfully painted, with Tan's great sense of lighting, chiaroscuro and colour, and the use of the same to create wonderfully simply but evocative atmospheric images that require little words to be appreciated. The landscape of his native Perth WA is perfectly captured in this book: blind white light, quiet neighbourhoods, over-present crows, the always crooked power lines, among others, which are incorporated into his wondrous magic world.

I love everything that Tan does, but this is, perhaps, his less inspired book. My opinion. It is still wonderful, but way too short and not as original or fulfilling, to me