The Arrival

I will remain forever astonished at the epic feat of world-building in The Arrival. It thoroughly pulls me into an immersive experience where I am learning along with the main character how to navigate the new world into which he has immigrated. As he learns, we learn. I find myself so emotionally involved with his success in his hopeful new reality. The art is amazingly detailed and conveys the complex and richly visual world, yet also sets a strong emotional tone that brings us into the action.

The Arrival’s target audience may be a bit older than that of my other picks, but the fantasy city that blooms to life in its sepia-toned art is no less awe-inspiring. It’s the story of a man immigrating, and adapting, to a city full of strange creatures, contraptions, and people – none of the writing is intelligible, none of the architecture makes much sense, and the humans who live there seem to have strange symbiotic relationships with monsters great and small. The book’s lack of text puts the reader on the same level as its protagonist: we must scrutinize… show more.

I bought my signed copy of this book at an exhibition of artwork by author/illustrator Shaun Tan. All ages can respond to these moving stories of being a stranger in a strange place. The story is told in sepia-toned graphic novel form. The endpapers are captivating with around sixty ‘mug’ shot illustrations of faces from every corner of the globe. Told over chapters charting various families’ departures and arrivals, there is an intriguing backdrop of surreal landscapes which cleverly conveys the feelings of ‘otherness’ being a foreigner forced to leave. A book you can revisit again and again, particularly in… show more.

This wordless book is told in sepia-toned pastels starring a character who resembles the Chinese-Australian author/illustrator himself. It appears at first to be an account of early 20th century immigration across an ocean until we arrive at the destination city, which is wondrously unlike any place any of us has ever seen. Everything in it is strange and beautiful, from the writing system to their money to the shapes of their vegetables to the ubiquitous animals that people keep as pets. Because no one has seen anything like this culture before, the book gives everyone the gift of knowing what… show more.

When my students first encounter The Arrival, they think we’re up to something naughty in English class by reading a book without words. But soon they see how deep it is. The trope of a stranger in a strange land is as old as Odysseus, as new as Ted Lasso. For me, Shaun Tan’s silent, surreal version is the most emotional. The immigrant struggles with the unfamiliar: signs, clocks, customs, technology, food. What helps him—what helps us all when we wander—is a series of unexpected friends: a fellow immigrant, a grocer, an old veteran, and, most of all, his constant… show more.

In 2007, artist Shaun Tan rocked my world with his wordless book masterpiece, The Arrival. It is rare for any book to so effectively put readers in the position of a character. A man from a darkly forbidding country leaves his family and emigrates to a new world, a world filled with unimaginable, fantastic wonders. Because it’s a fantasy, like the man, we can’t read any signage, either. We don’t know where things are, or even what things are. After he struggles to first find food, then shelter, then work, he encounters other emigrants who share their stories from… show more.

Imagine leaving your family and moving, on your own, to a place, where you can’t understand the language or the culture or even the buildings. A place where everything is utterly strange. The Arrival doesn’t just describe what that’s like. It allows you to experience it for yourself. And it explores how people can still communicate, even without shared language or culture. It’s a brilliant book - subtle and moving and full of hope. And it does all that without using a single word.

This is a silent graphic novel, layered and intricate, definitely aimed at older kids (9+), teens, and adults. It is the story of a man who leaves his homeland in search of a better future for himself, his wife, and his child. Tan’s art is sublime, there is so much to see (and feel) here, as we watch (and experience) the man’s struggle to settle and find work, to understand and make himself understood in this new country full of strange creatures and customs. One to pore over and revisit.

Don’t worry about how to read a wordless picturebook with… show more.

Like non-fiction picture books, wordless picture books also inherently demand spending a little more time with the illustrations. Every visual detail has the potential of adding another layer of understanding to the story, and no story is more layered in its detail than Shaun Tan’s The Arrival. Tan’s pictures don’t depict what the immigrant experience looks like so much as how I imagine it feels. Everything the main character encounters in his new home seems confusing and spectacular and strange, and when other immigrants share their own journeys with him, the worlds they came from look just as spectacular… show more.

I’d never seen anything quite like this book before. I happened upon it a few years ago at my most favorite bookstore (and bar) and it made me wonder, “Why aren’t all books this wonderful?" The world would be a better place! There are no words, thankfully, as the pictures are so completely satisfying, you’ll pour yourself into their poetry.