The images were detailed and interesting, you could have good discussions about the images with a KS2 class, and have fun deciphering the hidden meanings and events that the viewer shows us. A boy (Tristan) discovers a box at the dump, his curiosity takes over and he takes it home. Upon opening he discovers it's a view master with discs for him to view. These were of events in the world. Starts from how the world began past evolution, Egyptians, war and to the present day. The mechanisms around the boy’s eye as he watches the disks is quite elaborately worked out visually, though did not read clearly in print in the original edition. In 2011 I redesigned the book, given it was still in print, and the text was edited to accompany reproductions of illustrations closer to my original intentions in 1997. It’s now clear that different sections rotate and telescope inwards as the boy’s pupil dilates, so that eventually his pupil becomes that of a new big mechanical eye.

Tan's writing and illustrations are always very thought-provoking. The Viewer is the story of a young boy who regularly finds treasures at the local dump. One day he comes home with a box full of instruments for looking at things, including a viewfinder toy. Through this he looks at the pictures, which appear to include moments in world history. When he looks again they have changed. Eventually he crawls inside the viewer....The Viewer was a much more collaborative project than most picture book creation, where there is often – and strangely – little direct communication between author and illustrator, something I was familiar with as an illustrator of many short stories and book covers. Usually a text is written and then given to an illustrator to consider, a process overseen by an editor. Gary and I discussed concept, imagery and book design together from the outset, before any text was written, along with our mutual editor, Helen Chamberlin at Lothian Books, then an independent publisher based in Melbourne. Thought-provoking! Amazing illustrations and a story that will really make your mind work. I read this with a year 5 class and the pictures alone inspired some wonderful creative writing. The discussion we had at the end of the story was so lively because there are so many possible interpretations. The class produced some wonderful artwork based on this too. I could have reviewed this as a children's book. With an age recommendation of middle primary; an art style of detailed drawn; theme of inquisitiveness and history; the setting of a child space. But to me, this is a book this a book that is as valuable for adults. This is true to the style of both Gary Crew and Shaun Tan. Both of them create works that can be read by all. Where more details are seen as the reader gets older. If a teacher wanted to use it in a lesson with older students there is potential for a thought exercise about whether they would do what Tristan did. And the cost of inquisitiveness. Crew and Tan have worked together since The Viewer, publishing Memorial in 1999. Crew's story is chilling as are Tan's beautifully evocative and graphic illustrations. A particularly deft touch is the repetition in each new slide of a figure carrying a type of recording or viewing device from cave paintings to a scroll to a book to a telescope to a box camera to a video camera. In fact, each single panel is consistent with the ones previous, recurring images like a falling star appearing throughout. This book repays close and repeated readings just to take in all the clever little details.

I requested this book from my library solely to see more of Shaun Tan's illustrations. He's the illustrator, but not the writer of the story. The story is one of those creepy, horror stories that never comes right out and names the threat, or gives exact details about how the threat is eventually carried out. So, I don't think this is a great story to have "pictures" of things that should be left to the reader's imagination. Thank you for posting this - it looks fantastic. However, the version of the book that I've got doesn't have all the text that you've referred to in your planning. I would love to have the full text version as it is so rich - do you know where you got yours?Similar ideas can be found in a previous book Gary worked on with South Australian illustrator Steven Woolman, The Watertower; a kind of domestic horror with alien possibilities, an inconclusive ending, symbolic clues and innovative visual design. This book has to be rotated halfway through, and is more visually suggestive than illustrative. Notably, Gary has been a strong advocate of picture books created for ‘older readers’ – essentially arguing that there is no reason for them to be only young children’s literature, since our interest in reading visual images does not decline with age. Try reading the sentences aloud without the added words in the middle. The class will use similar grammatical features in the next lesson when they write their own character description.