Imperial Purple

Garth Nix
Illustrated by Sholto Walker
One Beastly Beast
Allen and Unwin 2008

One Beastly Beast is a collection of four children’s stories by Australian author Garth Nix. Only one (The Princess and the Beastly Beast) is actually new, the others being first published in 1998 to 2000 but since I have never read any of them before this is not an issue for me. Nix fans who already have the stories in their libraries may feel differently.

The first story is about Captain Blackbread (sic) and his gang of scurvy pirates who have stolen young Peter’s DVDs. Fortunately Captain Erasmus Rattus of His Majesty’s Royal Ratship Tumblewheel arrives and takes Peter to Neverworld where, with the help of a giant cheese, they defeat Blackbread and get the DVDs back.

The second story (containing the eponymous Beastly Beast) is of Princess Chlorinda who is bored in a castle where nothing ever happens. She sets out to search for adventure but without success. As she is trudging home in the dark she suddenly encounters a very strange monster.

Bill the Inventor is a young orphan in the O’Squealin Home for Lost Children. Bill is an inventor and his inventions (and some friendly mice) help to save him from being adopted by (in order) pirates, a wizard and a witch and aliens. The fourth set of potential adopters are a much better proposition.

Serena and the Sea Serpent is about a little girl who is very, very clever due to an unfortunately accident with a super-computer and a bolt of lightning when she was a baby. A sea serpent has been menacing the coast and sinking local shipping. The only way to keep it away seems to be sacrificing a young girl to it. Serena volunteers and uses her bulging brains to sort things out.

I’m something of a fan of Nix although it has mostly been his work for older children and young adults that I have read. These stories for younger readers are lots of fun and well up to standard. Walker’s illustrations are excellent and he is particularly good at rats and mice. Murex junior is still too young but when he is eight or nine I shall bring the book out again and I’m sure he will enjoy it.

Shaun Tan
Tales from Outer Suburbia
Allen & Unwin 2008

In a previous review I gave Shaun Tan five out of five for The Arrival. Tales from Outer Suburbia does not quite achieve such heights but it is still an excellent book.

It contains fifteen stories, all set more or less in the suburbs of an unspecified city and all told in Tan’s gentle and often surreal style. The off-beat nature of his vision serves to increase rather than diminish the humanity of his subjects. His artwork is, of course, superb.

In any book of stories there will be some you like more than others. Some, such as Broken Toys and Stick Figures are downright creepy. Some, like Our Expedition and Grandpa’s Story are little slices of life - not perhaps completely within what we would call normality but insightful. Eric is a beautiful, poignant little story and I loved The Water Buffalo.

There are lots of others to love but there were a few I felt didn’t work so well. When he strays into satire with The Amnesia Machine and Alert but not Alarmed he loses his sure touch although I did like what people did with their ICBMs in the latter. With Wake he lets anger take over and for me this did not work as well as his normal oblique approach.

Because of these (for me) little glitches I can only (!) give it four stars. I do recognise that others might disagree with me and think it should have been four and a half and I wouldn’t object at all. It is not the work of genius that is The Arrival but it is a damn fine book. A worthy addition to any library.