The Arrival

The Arrival is an amazing graphic novel concerning people, perhaps similar to your own ancestor’s, who left everything behind to travel to a new country in the hopes of forging better lives for their families. Not a word is written in this novel but the illustrations could be from your photo

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albums, black, grey and white, yellowed with age. They are the images you may have created in your mind’s eye when your parents told you the stories of your grandparents coming to America or in the case of this book, Australia. Author ShaunTan expresses this young father’s confusion and frustration with vivid imagery. The reader shares in the immigrant’s confusion by not being able to interpret the writing on the walls, the labels slapped upon his chest nor the buildings in this unfamiliar city. When friendly faces befriend the young man we all become more at ease. We are all safe, we are all……home.
Everyone will take something different away from this visual tale. As for me, I feel it reminds the reader that everyone holds a story within and we are all in this chaotic world together, might as well lend a helping hand.

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The Arrival by Shaun Tan has no words, but it tells a powerful story. Beautiful black and white and sepia toned art work illustrate the experience of an immigrant and his family (wife and daughter). He leaves their homeland first, arriving at his destination after 60 days of a ship voyage. He is

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processed by immigration officials and finds himself unable to speak or read the language of his new home. He meets other immigrants who share their stories with him and offer him help. It takes a while for him to find work in order to be able to send for his family to join him, but eventually he is reunited with them.

Not only is The Arrival a moving expose of the immigrant experience, but it is a feast for the eyes. Shaun Tan’s art is detailed, magical and emotional. He captures the expressions and feelings of his characters with ease.

Because Tan never specifically identifies where the immigrant comes from and where he ends up, this story becomes one of the universal nature of what it means to arrive in a new country where language, culture, and geography are a puzzle to be figured out. Despite surreal architecture and environment, Tan creates a landscape that also feels historical.

I don’t read a lot of graphic novels, but it is books like this one which make me wonder why I don’t…although I would classify The Arrival as a cross between a child’s picture book and a graphic novel.

Shaun Tan was born in Australia and is the award winning illustrator of several children’s books. The Arrival won the “Book of the Year” prize as part of the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, and the Children’s Book Council of Australia “Picture Book of the Year” award in 2007.

I would eagerly read more books by Shaun Tan.

Highly recommended.

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A man leaves his sinister home to try and find a better future for himself and his family. He arrives in a strange city in a strange land, where everything is completely different than he’s used to: architecture, letters, numbers, animals, food, even means of transportation. There he tries to

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create a new life.

Really, there isn’t that much to say about this dreamlike and utterly gorgeous wordless graphic novel about leaving home and finding a new one. You need to see Shaun Tan’s wonderfully strange landscapes, achingly human details and gentle storytelling for yourself in order to get it. And make sure you do. The word “masterpiece” is seldom this appropriate.

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The Arrival is a graphic novel/wordless picture book that amazingly speaks volumes about the immigrant experience.

The illustrations resemble the aged, black and white photographs carried from one life to the next by the immigrants of years past. Tan varies the presentation and layout of each page

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to create emphasis and impact. In this way and more, much about his characters are communicated. Many focus on small bits such as a face at a crucial moment, hands, the back of the head, or a distant view in silhouette. Each image is moving and highly personal. There is very little color, sepia tones, grays, tans and this adds to the mood and feel of the book. The faces, the small expressions and gestures, of each individual speak eloquently and beautifully. What a treat they all are, each and every one.

The plot is complicated, which is no small task in this format. The main plot involves the immigrant experience of one man and, as you go along, sub-plots develop which tell the immigrant story of those he connects with and who help him become familiar with his new surroundings. The setting is surreal and completely foreign to the reader, evoking the sensation of arriving in a place where all is unknown. The characters are heartbreakingly human in every way and wear all they think, feel, and experience on their faces and in their bodies. The fantastical creatures and settings are just a pleasure.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who loves graphic novels, is interested in the immigrant experience, or who enjoys beautiful stories told in pictures. Indeed, for anyone thinking of trying a graphic novel for the first time, this might be a good place to start.

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The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a wordless graphic novel about a man who immigrates to another country in order to obtain and forge a better life for his family.One thing that struck me about The Arrival was how imaginative it is. The art is beautiful and so creative. The world pictured in this book is

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not our world. There are different types of creatures which resemble pets, different sorts of buildings. I loved it! I wonder if these imaginings fall under steampunk or not?To further elaborate on the pictures, I thought they were deeply emotional. The feelings just crawl off the page. When the main character is missing his family, you don't need to read words to understand, it's all in the picture.I thought the lack of words lends to the universality of this book. Pictures are something any human can understand, unless of course you are blind.

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I was totally unprepared for this book, and found that when I finished it, I wanted nothing more than to begin in it again. It has become a book that I give as a gift to beloveds, and it has struck everyone who has read it.

The story without pictures encourages a very different way of engaging.

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There is so much space for thinking of the noises of the world, the smells of it, the voices of the people. It is in many ways overpowering, perhaps because it is so alien to most of us who have not read a "picture book" since we were able to comprehend script and letters.

Shaun Tan makes good visual decisions and good story-telling decisions. He uses a plot that is familiar to many: the arrival of an immigrant in a new place. That familiarity encouraged a level of comfort in me as reader, which meant that I paid much closer attention to where my eyes went on the page, what the lines did, and the time that it took to absorb an image. Because of that I have begun to seek out other 'stories without words' although I fear they are sadly lacking on the adults shelves.

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I know I'm in the minority, but I found this graphic novel confusing. The illustrations and art work were incredibly beautiful, but following the story seemed difficult.

It took a lot of time and energy to figure the story line. The illustrative tale seemed to jump around from frame to frame.

With all the raving reviews in amazon, I was excited to get a copy, but couldn't really believe how a picture book-cum-graphic novel could evoke such emotions as described by the readers/reviewers. But the pictures blew me away; loneliness and fear were carefully brought out in the geometric

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figures; surreal landscapes evoke a feeling of awe and wonder, and while the pictures looked vintage, they were also futuristic, or even apocalyptic; stunning images which sear your mind. It perfectly captures the "immigrant", but everyone can relate, as everyone has been a traveller at some point in his/her life. This book, in a way, shows how, as travellers, it is really ourselves we hope to find in the end.

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It has no words. It's just pictures. But "just pictures" is quite the understatement when describing this wonderful book. The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a graphic novel, but even without words, the intricate pictures tell a story that is full of fantasy, wonder, raw humanity, and curiosity.

The basic

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idea of the story is that a man is forced to leave his home and family and try to make a new home in another place, so he boards a boat and travels to a strange place, where he isn't understood, everything is strange, and he tries to find work. This is much the story for immigrants in our world today, but the vivid images suck you into this world to such a degree that this correlation isn't apparent until much near the end.

One must take note of the artist's craft here. Each picture is a work of art. It seems to be done in charcoal or sepia on rough paper. Each new city, each new face and experience is so exquisitely crafted that it is impossible to see it as pictures, but instead as a world in and of itself. He puts many tiles of clouds on one page to depict the passing of many days, several frames of a soldier's feet as the battle grew more difficult, the life and death of a plant as the seasons go by, or several pictures of the customs process to give you a clear idea of what the examinations were like. One page is dedicated to looking at our beloved character as he tries to communicate with a person, and with each frame, his facial expression is more and more confused, exasperated, and hopeless, wanting to communicate but being unable to. In chapter 3, as he is waking up, we see frame by frame the picture change from clouds into the pet creature that stays with him, and his surprise, and one might relate this experience to being startled by their cat in the morning. When he wants another character to tell our friend their backstory, the borders on the frames change from faded edges to a different backdrop, beginning a flashback. All of this is to say that our author/artist expertly uses images to convey thoughts and feelings in ways we can understand, making this book one of the most engaging and visually enthralling books I have ever had the opportunity to read.

There are also themes. One recurring theme is the paper crane, which, at the beginning, he makes for his daughter and pulls out of his hat for her as he gets on the boat. Throughout the book, he keeps making paper cranes, and as he grows more adjusted to the other creatures in this new place, he begins to make paper animals of them.

He uses repetition and comparison in other places too. The first page of chapter 1 and the first page of chapter 5 have the same content, composition, and layout, but one is items from their hometown in that cultural style and the other is the same kind of items but from the new place in their cultural style, showing that after he brought his family there with him, they made a home, just like before, but in this new place.

Overall, this book is visually incredible, and the story is very relatable and eye-opening. The characters are well developed and easy to empathize with. It's a new way to read, this analysis of the pictures, and sharing it with my friends and family, not many people could read it because they had no practice with interpreting from pictures; they were visually below grade level, visually illiterate. As a future teacher, I want my students to have a lot of experience with these kind of wordless books, learning how to make inferences from pictures so that, even without a standard attached, my students can appreciate such fantasy and magic as books like this bring to our world. I highly recommend this book as a way to stretch yourself, become visually literate, and enjoy the wonderful story, gorgeous artwork, and masterful craft.

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Imagine a wordless story from a time long ago; a man from a far away place, leaving his wife and daughter, and migrating to a new country. Shaun Tan brilliantly illustrates “The Arrival” through a movie-still like sequence of surrealistic drawings arranged much like an old family photo album.

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Each picture depicts with raw emotion a man’s fear and anxiety arriving in a strange land, with strange customs, language, buildings, animals, and food. As he struggles to find a place to live, to work, and eat, an odd creature becomes his companion. The cityscape is cone and pot shaped. The machines and appliances for everyday living are unfamiliar yet at the same time recognizable. The grainy drawings are sepia toned but change in hue over time as the stories shared become dark as war is depicted. The photos at times have age marks, are bent, and cracked adding to the historical quality of the wordless narrative. It is difficult to adequately describe how poignant, sad, yet heartwarming this immigration story is, allowing the reader to feel the confusion that immigrants must feel alone in a new country while trying to adapt. It can start wonderful discussions about immigration. Highly recommended. Grades 6-12.

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How can one resist a book with cover art so extraordinary it calls to you from the bookshop window? This graphic novel about arriving in a strange world, as an immigrant, is gorgeous and enlightening.

As each page turned, I realized I was reading about myself and my family. The boat from Europe to

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Australia, because we couldn't afford airfare. The arrival in a strange country where animals had pouches and hopped around on two legs. Trying to learn English, but really just picking up Strine (Aussie English). Inhaling the smell of potato cakes and meat pies, walking around with chippies in a cone of newspaper. Avoiding the venomous jellyfish at the beach, surfing past sharks at sunset. The efforts to gain citizenship. My family repeated the experience when we moved to the States, which was just as mind-boggling (volcanos, pineapples, fog, earthquakes, Americans). This is the first book that I've ever read that truly defines the experience, but as a silent picture in freefall.

Really rather breathtaking.


Book Season = Summer (when the world's population begins rotating)

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It was basically the story of a man who immigrated to a new country where he did not speak the language or know any of their customs. The story follows him as he slowly learns how to live in that country, and is finally able to send for his family. At the very end of the book, the man’s daughter

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is helping a new immigrant.

I did not particularly like this book. I have read graphic novels in the past that I liked, but those had at least some words. I do not mind the formatting of a graphic novel; I think that actually gives the reader a more accurate idea of how the characters feel. Personally, I like it to have at least a few words, though. I found some pages kind of confusing, even though I could understand the general idea.

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I love what Shaun Tan does with words. He removes them, and then gives them back to us in a new way.

The arrival is beautifully drawn – not just the pages, but the emotions and the surreal, intuited understanding of the unfolding tale. It’s a story about immigration and separation and it works

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on many levels. The ‘reader’ is in a strange country; there is no text, no language except a new visual landscape, which, for our delight, is full of small mascot-like pets and the intriguing artefacts of this charming and evocative new world.

I don't really want to write a review of this book: I want to draw you a picture.

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5Q, 5P

I think one of the most beautiful pages in this book is the first page in chapter VI, which directly mirrors the 9 panels on the first page of chapter I. It beautifully displays the fact that, though settings and circumstances can change, the presence of one's family is the only ingredient

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necessary to feel at home. Wonderful.

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This story, told entirely in pictures, tracks a man's journey from his home to a new country. As an immigrant, he must learn a new culture, a new language, and figure out where he fits in his new life. But through encounters with other immigrants he realizes that just by being there, he has been

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welcomed into a new family. Not your ordinary picture book, this is an artistic endeavor through which the artist reflects the characters feeling and emotion through subtle use of color and perspective. Try it out on your middle school student(s) to help hone their analysis of symbols.

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A book that ultimately, to me, is about immigration and the American dream. However, it touches on many different themes. War for example, part of the story is reminiscent of the second world war. Connection can be made to the fictional history told in the book and our own world's history. What was

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most interesting to me was the fact that none of the words were written in any language known on Earth. This gives the true feeling of what it is like to be trying to make it in a foreign land where you don't even know the language. This book is great for depicting the struggles and dreams of immigrants from all cultures to all cultures.

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A considerable achievement but a somehow arch and irksome one. In a graphic novel with no text, Tan presents the story of an immigrant from what seems to be a Mitteleuropische country to a New World resembling New York. Tan presents these two worlds as somehow familiar—the time appears to be just

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after the First World War here on earth--but also alien. Strange unearthly creatures, such as a dog that resembles a sperm with legs and huge steampunkish robots appear in the sepia-toned images. Where this work fails is in the presentation of both worlds as alien. If the idea is the disorientation of the immigrant in a totally new environment, then shouldn’t the reader get a sense of that disorientation? If there are giant killer robots in Bizarro Bohemia, what’s so special about sperm dogs in Alternate America? If disorientation is NOT the theme, then the book just smacks of a frankly masturbatory “darklingness.” Still, fans of graphic novels and teen/young adult readers may find the images compelling and eerie.

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The Arrival is the story of a man who leaves his country or world to make money for his wife and daughter. He loves his family very much, so leaving is hard. The land he travels to is very different, but very neat. Every human has a little creature; a pet I assume. His little pet goes with him

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everywhere and helps him throughout his day. He tries a few jobs and because he cannot speak their language, he relies on his sketches to get by at first. He meets many nice people who sympathize with him and his being lost at first. They all share why they have come to this place and in doing this help him through his lonliness. He is able to make some money and his wife and daughter are able to join him. At the end his daughter helps a lady that has just arrived to find her way. The cycle of helping the arrival(s) is passed on.

I think this would be a good book for third or fourth graders. The concept is pretty obvious. The pictures are very elaborate and show the characters' emotions quite obviously. I think it would be a good selection to help children of this age with inferences. Also, I think this would serve as a good creative writing assignment. I remember teachers doing this sort of thing to help us get our imaginations flowing. It was really good practice for writing and I plan on doing it someday.

I loved the pictures. The lack of color made it feel really sad in some parts, but then when it was all bright you could tell the world around him and his mood was really light. The detail of the scenery, and the frames were really cool. I have loved being forced to read so many different types of books. I have enjoyed being out of the box, and hope to use some of these very books in my classroom one day. I liked the theme of this story also; the importance of helping others and the importance of family.

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Shaun Tan's book "The Arrival" is a picture book that contains no words. I was shocked at the difficulty of this book due to the lack of guidance from image to image and what they represented. I understood the concept that the father had to leave his family to travel somewhere; however, I never

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understood where he was going. He faces challenges of communication and struggles to find a job once he arrives to his destination. Although the book contains only images, I was informed today that it is actually considered a graphic novel instead of a picture book due to the white lines that separate each image. I would not recommend this book to anyone. The storyline is difficult to follow and it is not very entertaining. I believe it would be extremely hard to make lesson plans using this book as the center of the activites. The lack of words and definite plot divides it from other books that would be more beneficial in the classroom.

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First of all, this picture book has astoundingly beautiful illustrations, and really glows with artistic wonder. It seems to be about immigration, and a little about war, with some possible historical references that are hard to catch. The way it depicts the new place and the wonder/amazement it

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brings with it is my favorite part about the illustrations; to me, this allows a reader to emphasize with an immigrant coming to a new, modern world, and discovering all the different things about it. One of my favorite parts about this picture book is the being open to interpretation. Without words, and with so little action, there is much room for interpretation in this book, which I think really allows the reader's imagination to blossom, especially for young adults. They can imagine so many different ways to understand what the book is about, and this allows multiple things to be learned from just one part of the story. I really enjoyed looking through this book, and I think most students would be fascinated by it, if not confused a little.

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The artwork in this book is simply stunning, beautiful, though provoking and exquisitely detailed. I loved the use of sepia tones to give it a more old fashioned and yet timeless feel.
No words were needed to tell this story and in fact I feel they would have gotten in the way and weakened the

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overall effect. When I started the book I had no idea what the story was, I chose it based solely on the quality of the artwork as I flipped through it, so it was a pleasure to try and guess the story just from the images rather than starting with a preconceived idea of what was going on.
This is an absolutely beautiful book.

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This wordless story is incredibly powerful and moving. A man sets off on a long voyage to a strange country - where he does not recognise the food, speak the language, or appear to have any value. Tan's pictures of strange vegetables, pets, and alphabets give an strong sense of what it must feel

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like to be somewhere utterly foreign, alien to your past experience. The loneliness of being separated from family and culture is made clear, and is easy to identify with - and the glimmers of understanding, the little things that might be found in common, and the stories that can be shared through gestures and expression alone are all conveyed here. By telling us a story without words, Tam show us the story of a man forced to make friends and a life all without understanding any words around him. The emigrant faces on the endpapers are a reminder that this is not fiction, but a common experience of human beings around the world.

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This wordless graphic novel is an absolute jewel. It tells the tale of a man who emigrates to another land, leaving behind his wife and young daughter. When he gets there on board a ship with hundreds of other travellers, he finds everything is different, from the writing to the cityscapes, methods

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of transportation, the plants, the food and the creatures. Only the people look like regular humans, but otherwise he might as well be on another planet. It expresses in a wonderful way what it feels like to find oneself in a different country with a completely different culture where even the simplest things seem strange for a newcomer. The illustrations are gorgeous and wonderfully imaginative, and the overall book—including the blank pages—is a work of art. It's one of my all-time favourites already.

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The power from the images, black and white, almost foggy is incredible. It leaves a lasting impression without ever saying a word. I love the pages with 6-8 pictures in the square and you can follow the story progression from picture to picture.