Today morning, after the kids had left for school and I'd walked the dog and had a second cup of coffee, I sat down feeling... deflated. I tried doing some breathing exercises in the hope that I'd feel a bit better ('inflated?'), but that didn't work either.

I was sitting on the floor of my study and right in front of me was a small shelf of picture books, middle grade and YA fiction. I pulled a book out at random. It was Shaun Tan's The Red Tree.

I'd bought the book last year at the insistence of a friend and fellow writer who has impeccable taste in picture books. I'd read Tan's The Arrival, a wordless graphic novel in which a man leaves behind his family and arrives at a new place hoping to build a better future for them all. The book is moody, sad and beautiful.

Today wasn't the first time I'd read The Red Tree, but today the book spoke to me in a way it hadn't before. On previous readings, I've admired the illustrations and the way the book feels both rooted in the present but also in a strange, not-too-distant, dystopian future.

The book follows a person through their day. A day that begins 'with nothing to look forward to' and in which things go from 'bad to worse'.

As we see them walk through the streets, the minimal text explores this person's emotions and feelings - darkness, isolation, of not being understood, that the real life you should be leading is passing you by, fear, worry and that feeling of helplessness and not knowing what to do. Or 'who you are meant to be'.

Alongside these musings are Shaun Tan's art. Painterly, sinister and terrifying at times, they capture the mood of the words perfectly. I'm not sure how he came to decide that a giant fish floating through the streets with it's mouth agape was the right way to show 'darkness overcomes you' but it just feels so right.

As I read the book this time, I noticed something that I hadn't on previous readings: that on each spread there was a small red maple(?) leaf tucked into each illustration - afloat or in rest, hard to spot in some, in plain sight in others. I felt as though everything would be ok if I found the leaf on each page.

The book ends on a note of hope which I am very thankful for, and that sometimes that elusive thing you've been looking for is right in front of you.

Though The Red Tree is a picture book, I do believe it's a book readers of all ages can find solace in, especially during these times we find ourselves in, in which that not-too-distant dystopian future seems to have already arrived.