The Arrival

When I read Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival' I felt as though I had been transported into a different world. All the sounds around I dimmed to a muted silence as I was immersed in the quiet reality of the book. Using solely pictures to tell the tale of one man's journey from his oppressed country into the free world, Tan forces the reader to look beyond the drawn image and hear the sounds, feel the emotions, touch the pavement, and share in the confusion and discovery.

As the daughter of immigrant parents, I was truly able to appreciate Tan's attention to the simple details of the immigrant experience. Inventing a new language based on symbols beautifully portrayed the feeling of confusion my parents described to me when they first arrived in the United States. It was all there in this story: the medical exams, the labeling, the misunderstanding, the moments of distraught fear, the unexpected helping hand, the exchange of stories, the slow adaptation to new life, the reunion, and finally, the complete sense of belonging - it was both foreign and familiar.

Tan also masterfully makes this book a universal experience; his characters can be from any ethnic background and their oppressive countries could be anywhere in the world. This universality also extends to the 'land of freedom' where the bizarre foods, transportation, monuments, animals, and language make even the reader feel like they are on a distant planet. Moreover, his stunning drawings perfectly illustrate the main characters emotions; transporting the reader into this silent journey and making them part of the story - at times as a silent witness, others as another character.

Although 'The Arrival' is a beautiful and detailed picture book, I would not read it to children under 11 years of age. It has a very mature content which palpably evokes emotions of fear, confusion, and distress that might be shocking for a young audience. Shaun Tan has written a memoir in silence, but the silence should not be considered a lack of communication, only a different medium.

This book has the most inspiring and beautful drawings I've seen in a book. The quality of the book and the meaning makes this book a must have for anyone of any age.

Shaun Tan's "The Arrival" is a story told without any conventional text. The beautifully drawn and detailed sepia pictures move from the grand scale of strangely geometrical cityscapes to the intimacy of a close-up in a single frame. The story is that of a man with a family who leaves them to look for work in a new country and his experiences there. Whether or not the author's "argument" is literally true (is it, for example, a romanticised interpretation of immigration?) the encounters and incidents that the man meets with are convincing because they represent certain common experiences that anybody who has ever travelled to a strange land will understand instantly. In that sense it has tremendous power to appeal to a broad range of readers. Moreover, it is at heart a deeply optimistic book. Readers of different ages will extract different things from this gentle book but it is suitable for readers of all levels and cultures.

An amazing work of tireless illustration coiled around an eerily ethereal story of oppression, immigration, and hope. At once familiar and fantastical, as if it is set in a parallel universe where Ellis Island is more like Ellis Planet. This is a brilliant, wordless YA graphic novel which at times has the feel and pacing (like segments of The Invention of Hugo Cabret) of a silent film. Sublime genius!

At some level, every book about immigrants lets you watch their story from the outside. After their arrival, they work hard to learn to cope in a world that the reader is already familiar with. In "The Arrival," however, Shaun Tan turns this view inside out. His immigrants travel to a land that is modeled on America, but is fabulously alien and incomprehensible. Weird statues jut out of the harbor. People speak in languages that cannot be understood. The alphabet is strange, the technology is miraculous, the architecture and clothing is otherworldly. Tan 's imaginary America is as wondrous, weird and terrifying as Oz on steroids. Tan tells the story without words, in the silent language of unshared language. His images are sepia-toned and sometimes cracked like photos pulled out of an old shoe box. His story-telling is sublime. He tells the story of a long ship passage by showing two pages of cloud pictures. His stories are poignant and frightening. His hero, a man who travels to America to prepare a place for his wife and daughter, flees in a dark Eastern-European world in which dragon tails (symbolizing tyranny or persecution) streak the sky. He meets other characters with tales as chilling as his own.

A fabulous book whose pantomime is easy to understand, and which allows native Americans to feel what it must be like to experience a telephone, subway, mailbox, pet dog, cucumber or hot shower for the first time.