Ten-Word Tiny Tales
Joseph Coelho and various illustrators
Walker Books

When explaining how the twenty stories in this book came about, poet and current Children’s Laureate, Joseph Coelho tells readers, ‘these are not cutesy tales – these are tales of teeth and claws!’ Despite their seeming simplicity, each of these fragmented story bits imply a more elaborate story and to this end, Joseph invited twenty artist friends to provide an illustrative interpretation, each one bringing a unique style to the enterprise. The resulting double-page spreads, through the interplay of words and pictures, are in turn mysterious, surreal, inexplicable or downright sinister.

For instance Nahid Kazemi portrays a moment of serenity as Grandma slumbers in her favourite chair while one of her plants – the Venus flytrap – edges ever closer to the blissfully unaware sleeper.
Equally disquieting is Thea Lu’s interpretation of ‘The X-rays reveal writing etched onto all of my bones.

Meanwhile Flavia Z. Drago’s dining table scene combines touches of the dark humour of cartoonist Charles Addams with Magritte in her dining table scene; and look how Shaun Tan plays with scale in this enormously unsettling rural scene.

No matter where you open the book however, you are likely to find something to spark your imagination. To facilitate that Joseph offers several drawing and writing prompts to inspire and motivate children to extend the tales with ‘new beginnings, endings and middles’. What he says in ‘Take Your Pen on a Journey’ is what one hopes ,all teachers would be doing in the classroom.

A real treasure box this, with endless potential for creativity both at home and in school.