The Arrival

This is a wordless book, the author telling the story with his beautiful artwork. But this is not specifically a children’s book, though they may also enjoy it. The illustrations convey the confusion that often assaults the senses of a new immigrant. The lack of any written explanation reinforces the isolation felt by many who lack the conversational and written language skills needed in the host country. As the main character tries to adjust to his new environment, he meets others who help him along the way, sharing their immigrant stories. Ultimately he is able to send for his family and help them make their adjustments, and the story comes full circle.Because there are no written explanations, the author allows the reader to enter into the story at his level of comfort. The book can be read quickly at a fairly superficial level, or more slowly, pondering the situations and symbolism presented.I bought this book for my son who is an artist and animator. He responded that he is enjoyed and appreciated this unique method of communication.

My husband checked this book out of our public library. He wanted the rest of the family to look at the book. Our 2 teens were busy with the start of school so I picked it up.I fell in love with the story, told entirely using pictures. No words in the entire book. I admire the art style which is a blend of richly detailed, realistic portraits of people and a sci-fi-esque highly imaginative environment.I immediately ordered a copy of the book for us and one for a friend who is an ESL teacher (English as a Second Language). Some of her kids come to America knowing zero English. What a great way to immediately show them a book with substance that seeks to show we understand a smidgen of what they are going through.Our copy will be useful for discussions with our exchange students and as an interesting, beautifully illustrated coffee table book.There are multiple things I love about this book but here are my top two:1. As the immigrant meets people the story shifts to the new person’s immigration story. There are at least 4-5 different stories included, each touched my heart.2. There is an underlying theme of the seasoned immigrants helping the new immigrants, passing along skills, information, directions, food—the cycle is woven throughout the pages of this book.We highly recommend this book and are looking forward to exploring more of the artist’s work.

"The Arrival" is a genre-connecting hardback picture book that took Shaun Tan four years to create based on narratives of immigrants coming to the U.S., combined with visual references he studied from antique post cards, historical photographs and even paintings and etchings by earlier artists.This is a very, very carefully designed work that may remind readers of the stunning experience the first time you read "Maus: A Survivor's Tale," the famous graphic novel about the Holocaust by Art Spiegelman. (In fact, Spiegelman's praise for "The Arrival" appears on the back cover of the book, calling this "something new and exceptionally worthy.")"The Arrival" tells the story of a young father who leaves his wife and daughter behind in their impoverished and dangerous homeland to journey to a distant city based on the New York City of an earlier era. Like millions of immigrants over the past two centuries, he is the patriarch of a family bravely going on ahead to establish a home for his family in a new world.Many of the beautifully rendered images in the book are straight out of Ellis Island historical materials. HOWEVER, the stunning innovation Tan adds to the story is the way he moves from those historical snapshots of the immigrant experience -- to a wildly off-kilter New York City in which the Statue of Liberty looks oddly like a pair of welcoming giants in exotic costumes. New York's pigeons become strangely beautiful flying fish. The English language of advertisements, newspaper headlines and grocery store packaging becomes a bizarrely cryptic new alphabet that we can't quite understand.Common American foods take on exotic, fanciful shapes and textures. Even ordinary American pets become exotic animals that seem to have fallen to earth from a science fiction novel.Are you glimpsing the point of this visual slight of hand? As we follow the story of this immigrant -- we SEE America through the eyes of an immigrant. The strangeness of our skylines, our symbols, our language, our foods, our pets, our architecture -- actually looks strange to us, as readers.This is what makes this book ideal for reading over and over with young readers -- spotting the dozens of subtle ways Tan twists and turns elements of the tale to help us not only empathize with the immigrant and his family -- but to actually feel his disorientation as we read the book!Some chapters of the book are very dark. As immigrants meet in this new land, across the cultural and religious chasms that may separate them, they share stories of danger and oppression in their homelands. One immigrant tells a horrifying story of a war that left him crippled and homeless. Another immigrant tells a tale of what seems to be ethnic cleansing in his homeland.Once again, Tan's imagery is rooted in stories we know -- but he enlarges and re-imagines the visual grammar of these stories until the ethnic cleansing becomes a terrifying tale of gigantic, faceless technicians with flame throwers who tromp through the streets of a village.Although the story becomes dark at several points, there is nothing in the book that is more troubling than scenes in "The Chronicles of Narnia." And each moment of darkness throws into dramatic relief a moment of great joy as the immigrants realize how much they are thankful for in their new community. There's even a strange kind of Thanksgiving dinner at one point in the book.Wherever you live in the world, as you read this, "The Arrival" is the story of someone you know -- a friend, a neighbor, a relative -- or perhaps this is your story captured vividly in a new form for a new century.

Artist, Pencillier Shaun Tan has gifted us with a book of his art. Over-simplified, it is a wordless graphic Novel. An immigrant leave his home and family, entering a world almost familiar but to him strange and alien. Maps, signage, even animals are fantastic but must be made , to him comprehensible.In sepia tones, suggesting this is a collection of old photographs , we follow a nameless, any man immigrant, traveling ahead of his family in the hopes of getting them all away from of the sinister reptilian something haunting his home.I cannot speak of it further except in superlatives.For the rest I am forcibly reminded:“And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.”Exodus 2:22Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.Exodus 23:9

Second time that I have purchased this book. This is to be given to a young girl who is Dyslexic as the story told in wordless pictures of a person moving to a country where they do not know the language or how to read said language reflects to a degree the struggle they themselves endure with reading. This is to try to show that books are not the enemy and that there are more than one way to "read".