ABSTRACT
Shaun Tan is an eminent figure of Australian children's literature in the twenty-first century. Tan's international success has been marked commercially by the proliferation of international editions and translations of his picture books and critically by the proliferation of awards, including an Academy Award for the animated short film adaptation of The Lost Thing, and in 2011 the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which is given for sustained aesthetic and humanist achievement in children's literature. In 1959, a figurative expressionist group calling themselves The Antipodeans held an exhibition in Melbourne, the catalogue for which saw the first publication of "The Antipodean Manifesto". This section of the Manifesto was contributed by John Brack, and Brack's identity as a figurative expressionist and as an artist of adaptation mark his work in particular as significant for a full understanding of The Lost Thing.
