Saying that it is an amazing book would be selling it short! Like all fine works of art it is to be cherished. Go grab a copy and 'see' it if you haven't or even if you have!

This book tells the story of a man who leaves his home and family and comes to start a new life for them all in an alien culture. Because The Arrival is a graphic novel that takes as it's setting an imaginary land with a unique language, the reader is able to enter the world as the protagonist does, completely at the mercy of the world he's trying to call home. The fine and suggestive illustrations allow the reader to experience the confusion, isolation, terror and wonder of this journey. This book helped me to appreciate the struggles my own ancestors, and everyone else in America's ancestors, must have faced in their passage of immigration. I also found a new compassion for those future citizens hoping to live within our borders, whose difficulties and challenges they must face daily. In California you meet so many different nationalities, so many people trying to make a new life for themselves and their families, and they're doing it for the most part with dignity and purpose, starting with the simple desire to begin again in a land of opportunity. The Arrival depicts this ambition with genuine sincerity and truth. I highly recommend it.

Shaun Tan, The Arrival (Arthur A. Levine, 2007)

There's a single panel, towards the end of Chapter 2 of Shaun Tan's remarkable graphic novel The Arrival, that sums up a great deal of what you need to know about the book. Previously, a man has left his wife and daughter behind to emigrate to a new land, where everything is unfamiliar to him. When, despite the cultural and language barriers he faces, he manages to find lodging, he pulls out his suitcase and opens it. Instead of the things he packed, what we see is his wife and daughter, sitting and eating a meal alone in the house he used to share with them. Everything about the scene is rendered in exquisite detail, and it's a perfect synecdoche for Tan's approach to his material here; the fabulist attitude laced with a hefty dollop of surrealism, the feel of how it is to be a stranger in a strange land, and Tan's sure hand with his illustrations, right down to the way he gives us the kind of cracking you see on old photographs.

As our nameless protagonist journeys through the city, he meets other immigrants, and he assimilates culturally by listening to their own stories of what it was like to emigrate from their homelands to this wonderful city where all of them have ended up. Tan tells a universal-- clichéd, perhaps-- story in such a unique way that I would think it impossible not to be charmed. This is fine, fine work indeed, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. You need to read this book. *****

The book takes a bit of struggle to read .... because there are no words. There are no words because the subject of the book doesn't read the language. You are equal to him in your understanding of the language of the book's writing. All is strange and magical, foreign and familiar. The one constant in the book is that people are people, always and everywhere.

Buy it, read it, share it with your friends.

This graphical comic is just beautiful. The story and metaphor are beautiful, as well as the drawings .. actually the drawings are uncredibly well done and each of them (even the less significant ones) could be used as prints. I was expecting to be a bit bored, since there is no text, but honestly no text is needed and the drawings say it all.
Higly recommended!!!!

The thing I really like about graphic novels is that you can usually read them in less than an hour. There are notable exceptions, of course, such as Alan Moore's The Watchmen. But most of the time, they read fast. I finally gave The Arrival a viewing, and it's quite an intriguing read.

The problem with describing it is that it's wordless. Much of the content is up to the viewer. You can make a guess as to what is happening or what is represented. Then, in about a year, you could look at it again and have a new take.

From what I can tell, this is the story of an immigrant that comes to a new land. We don't know why, only that he decides to pack up his bags and travel to a new home. He leaves a spouse and a daughter behind with great sadness. You can tell this parting brings them all pain. You can tell because of the drawings Shaun Tan made. Each one is packed with emotional punch.

I can only assume the immigrant is coming to America, although you wouldn't know it at first glance. To give us a sense of what it must be like for an immigrant, Tan creates a world in which nothing makes sense. There are strange symbols, pets, and foods. As the people on the boat arrive at the dock, they don't see the Statue of Liberty. Instead, they see a statue of two men shaking hands. On their shoulders are two animals, and one man holds a fruit. This is Tan's stroke of genius. He allows us to feel what immigrants must feel when they enter a strange country. No words are readable; no speech can be understood. Every vision is unfamiliar and sometimes scary. The man must use crude drawings he makes to communicate his needs for shelter or food.

We follow this man around as he tries to make sense of his new home. The reader will have many questions. For instance, why are there dragon scales following the man as he leaves his home? Why does he see the creature that follows him around as an alien baby? Is this because to immigrants, dogs and cats would not be common pets? What are the spaceships flying around supposed to represent? Buses? Planes?

I suppose that Tan could be going for a non-literal translation. In other words, maybe every item viewed on the pages isn't supposed to represent a counterpart that would be identifiable in America. Maybe the spaceships just represent transportation, and the alien creature just represents another life form, rather than a literal dog or cat.

The drawings are certainly beautiful, and readers will enjoy following the man's story. This is recommended for all ages.

This is a brilliant masterwork of ....what exactly?

Well, it's a graphic novel with the overwhelming force of franz Masereel's pioneering work 'The City'

But it's also evocative of great literature, like Kafka's introductory chapters of 'Amerika' and 'The Castle', or his short story, The Animal in the Synagogue, and the dazzling architectural fantasy of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

But it's also a dark fairy tale of uncertainty and catastrophe, survival and wonder, one that brings the ghastly sweep of the twentieth century into mythical focus. Yes, it's that good.

But it's also an amazing book for children on the verge of arriving into the strange world of adulthood.

But it's also a revelatory book for adults to come to terms with what they have wrought, look through the eyes of a visitor, like an innocent child, and arrive to a new conclusion about where they "fit".

But it's also a philosophic parable on the Lacanian sinthome, broken letters or words struggling to come into existence for the child/visitor/adult.

But it's also a silent film on paper, with a Buster Keaton hatted protagonist arriving into a new world.

But it's also a beautiful album of artwork, each page can stand independently as an image, or ensemble of images. So the narrative runs through each page, but the page does not depend on the next page to have meaning, beauty, and integrity.

But, because of these important aesthetic accomplishments, it's also more than the sum of its parts.

We have here a standard of art few have realized, a deeply empathetic and compassionate allegory of human being anyone on the planet can read and close their eyes when they close the book and know something beautiful has arrived.

The number one rule for writers everywhere is "Show, don't tell," and Shaun Tan's lovely, fragile, evocative wordless picture book is the ultimate expression of that rule. In an era when even in the enlightened United States of America, immigrants tend to be mistrusted, this book serves as a powerful reminder that the immigrant experience is fundamental to our heritage. But it is far more universal than that--it captures the dreads and hopes of ANYONE seeking to make a new life for themselves ANYWHERE. The ways in which, not only through the main character, but through visual flashbacks from his new friends, we are shown symbolically the kinds of oppression that drive people from their homelands, are particularly striking, as are the tender ordinary moments such as the man's cherished memories of his wife and child, who have yet to join him.

This is a picture book for older children and adults--and why shouldn't they have something this strange and wonderful? Why should small children be the only recipients of an art form whose full potential may arguably be realized for the first time in an extraordinary work like The Arrival?

I bought this book, not only because it was well reviewed, but because I own and love Tan's book, The Red Tree. But this book takes Tan's artistry to a whole new level. I was moved in so many ways, I can't even begin to name them. I'm usually inclined to offer some kind of congratulations to the author or illustrator of a particularly fine work, but in this case, all I can say to Shaun Tan is "Thank you."

This book has
- no words
- amazing pictures
- emotional depth
- magical settings
- terrible monsters
-

This is a book everyone can relate to - we've all felt like outsiders at some point in our lives. At 128 pages, it takes only 30 minutes to 'read' before you'll want to go over it again more slowly in detail.

It is the tale of a man leaving his family for a distant foreign land and facing all the strange things there, unable to speak the language, understand the food, the animals, the people, the rules.

Every time I've shown this book to friends, I've eventually had to prize it out of their hands as they pour over the detailed drawings, tears welling up at the beautiful story.

You'll never get tired of it.

This is NOT a little kid picture book as subject matter and the pictures won't make sense to you unless you're a bit worldly and know something about the HOT topic of immigration and immigrants. I would say, at least, a teenager or older. As you move through the pages, you become the immigrant trying to decipher the world of the exotic -- nothing looks like or sounds like or behaves like the familiar back home. How do you navigate this world when navigation is a MUST as conditions back home are unliveable and others are depending on you. Try it; you'll gain a new respect for what the newcomer is up against. Try it with your children or grandchildren. It was certainly a lesson in empathy for me.

To call this a picture book is to limit the feast to a single item. This masterpiece has many layers and nourishes from the very young to beyond wise elders. An individual will enjoy total immersion and a group will be supplied with discussion items for as much time as available. This should be listed in the United States award columns.

There are no words in this book, just beautifuly drawn images colored with sepia, yet you will have no difficulty in understanding the story of a man who immigrates to a new country leaving his family (temporarily) behind. The lack of words and use of symbolism actually intesify the "story line" until you could put the words in yourself. The people and country are strange enough that you feel as if you are the alien immigrant moving through this story. When you reach the end of the book there's just a little hint of blue sky, the only color in the book. A moving and artistic look at the reasons people immigrate and the struggles they have to integrate into a new environment. Loved it!

"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.

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.

The Arrival is a truly amazing graphic novel. Although it takes place in a fictional and fantastic world, one can't help but relate to the main character and his struggle to relate to those around him and survive in a strange environment. The pictures are truly amazing, and the fact that there are no words makes it a truly unique reading experience. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes graphic novels, cares about immigration, or feels a sense of longing to fit in in a world they can't always relate to.

More often than not, wordless comics somehow inspire the reader to move faster rather than slow down and enjoy the view. Shaun Tan's sumptuously detailed drawings in THE ARRIVAL work to the opposite. I found myself holding the book out from my body so I could enjoy the images in full, lingering on a page or a sequence of panels and letting the enormity of the small moments the artist captures sink in and take effect.

This incredible book recasts the Ellis Island experience as a journey to a phantasmagorical land of strange languages, machines, and creatures, creating a delightful visual metaphor for the alien wonders of a new world, even when that world is part of our own, separated from us only by an ocean.

THE ARRIVAL is a stirring picture book of the best kind.

A book without words? Yes. "Arrival" communicates in a universal language that reveals itself more fully with each reading. If you've ever for a moment felt like a stranger in a foreign land, you'll emotionally connect with this story.

Let me begin my review with an attempt to describe this graphic novel's first chapter:

"The Arrival" begins with a departure: the first images shown are nine squares arrayed three across and three down on the page. The squares depict from right to left, top to bottom an origami bird; a mantel clock (It's ten minutes after ten.); a man's hat and a woman's head kerchief hanging on a wall; a humble cook pot and wooden spoon; a child's line drawing of a family showing father, mother, and child; a cracked, yet steaming, tea pot; a partially filled tea cup - also chipped - sitting on a saucer next to some papers, one of which shows a steam ship; an open but packed suitcase; and the final image on the page is that of a family of three: a young father, mother, and daughter. The next page of nine images starts by showing that this last image of the family from the previous page is in fact a framed photograph which is removed from a shelf, lovingly wrapped, and packed away in the suitcase.

This page is followed by a full page drawing of a young couple (The parents in the photograph.) gently touching hands over the packed suitcase resting atop a kitchen table on which are set the teapot, two cups of tea, and the papers (Tickets?). Behind the couple is a fire place with the origami bird and the clock on the mantle's ledge, the cooking pot in the hearth, the hat, kerchief, and the child's drawing hanging on the hearth's face.

Next is a page of twelve squares, three across, four down, that show the daughter waking from sleep, having a bowl of food, looking at the suitcase, next comes the father donning his hat, the mother putting on her head kerchief, then helping the girl dress, the girl lifting the suitcase to her father, and he reaching down to accept it.

The next six pages show the family holding hands and appearing very small as they walk down dark streets while threatening serrated shadows whip across the walls above them. The family arrives at a train station. Here, the father removes his hat exposing the origami bird resting on his head, he gives this small white bird to his daughter, the family embraces, he boards the train, the mother and father grasp hands as the train begins to pull away, and the train vanishes into the dark horizon. The final page of this first chapter depicts the mother and daughter walking home as the sky seethes with ominous tentacle like shapes.

The chapters that follow chronicle the father's voyage and the confusion of his relocation; his trials and tribulations, challenges and frustrations met and overcome, joys and wonders experienced, and friends made; all ending with the reuniting of the family in better circumstances. Along the way, "The Arrival" also chronicles other immigrants' stories.

All this is told without one word; every action, scene, interchange is illuminated by images beautifully rendered in charcoal or sepia crayon. The drawings attest that Mr. Tan is a first rate draughtsman: no matter whether the subject drawn is a landscape, an interior, or a figure, the grays are nuanced, the darks are rich, the lines expressive, and his panel to panel composition is perfectly linked.

Even if these drawings were straight forward depictions this book would be a noteworthy effort, but the images here transcend the familiar to include the magical and the phantasmagorical: objects odd and delightful, creatures bizarre and beguiling, and landscapes enchanting and horrific. The cliche "A feast for the eyes and the mind" is the perfect description here. One can "read" through the story fairly quickly, but one's eyes will always feel compelled to return to, linger over, and contemplate these images and each return will enrich one's appreciation of the story.

I think this is a benchmark graphic novel by which all other such works should be compared. Everyone and anyone who loves good, emotionally satisfying, stories and beautifully drawn images should own a copy of this book. I know that everyone I know and love will be getting this book as an early holiday gift.

I have yet to see a graphic novel equal or superior to this and I doubt I'll ever see one that is better. Please excuse my gushing.

Highly recommended.

This picture book that you would find in the childrens section of the bookstore is amazing, to be honest the narrative (which is old via knock-me-over illustrations) has a lot more to say than a few recent adult books I've read..

This is one of those special present books. It's beautiful.

If you are one of those adults who enjoy collecting childrens books, you'll love this. Promise.

While it doesn't take long to "read", its artwork is just so captivating. The reason I put read in quotes is that there aren't any words, just pictures. But the artwork that is there, is just outstanding. You could take forever just engrossed in the beautiful artwork that is inside of this book. The story that is told through this artwork is really great. Its basically the story of a man who travels to a new place and is dependent on the kindness of strangers. All in all, a great story that everyone should take a look at.

Shaun Tan's book is a feast for the eyes and a gentle reminder of the difficulties that everyone faces adapting to a new environment. My son just started middle school at a new school and this book was a lovely way of reminding him that change is hard for everyone, not just children. This book could just as easily be for adults however, as it's political overtones are clear: the drive to escape oppression, lack of freedom, and poverty.

Shaun Tan's The Arrival may be the most beautiful book I've ever seen. The Arrival is a 128 page picture book that tells the story of an immigrant. It could be the story of any immigrant going to any new land, but it happens to be the story of a man heading off to a bizarre yet beautiful world that is so unfamiliar to anything that we know of today to set up a home for his wife and child. The food, the creatures, the jobs, the way of life, the way of travel...it's all new and bizarre and told beautifully through Tan's haunting, sepia toned artwork. Each villager that he meets has their own story of how they came to the land and what they left behind. What Tan presents is an homage to every migrant that's ever traveled to a new world and set up a new life for themselves. The story is told through pictures only - no words, and no words are needed. This is a beautiful book and I can't help but feel that every family should have a copy on their bookshelf.

There are some books that come across my plate that strike me as mildly amusing. There are some books I develop a passion for over time. But once in a very great while, one per year if I'm lucky, I will find a book that gives me a powerful shock. An almost electric, instantaneous passion. "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan is the most amazing thing I've had the pleasure to read in years. A silent story of sequenced panels, "The Arrival" tells the story of a man's immigration to a strange new land, and the people and places he discovers in the course of finding a place to call home. I have never read any book that puts the reader so perfectly into the shoes of someone who finds themselves somewhere that is completely and utterly bewildering to the senses.

A man prepares to leave his family for a new world. Tearfully they let him go as he boards a ship for another land. Once he arrives, he finds himself at a loss. Everything from the language to the buildings to the birds is strange here. The reader of this book sympathizes easily with the man since author/illustrator Shaun Tan has created a world that is just as odd to us as it is to our protagonist. Appliances consist of confusing pulls and toggles. People live and work in plate and cone-shaped structures, traveling via dirigibles and strange ship-shaped machinations of flight. As the man proceeds to discover how to find lodging, food, and work, he meets other immigrants who tell their own stories of hardship and escape. Through all this, our man grows richer for his experiences and even grows to love the odd little white-legged cat-sized tadpole creature that follows him everywhere. By the end, his family has arrived as well and the last image in the book is of his daughter as she helps another immigrant get directions in this dazzling and magnificent city.

Sometimes you fall in love with a book when you remember all the tiny details and little moments in it. At one point our hero looks in a pot and sees a spiked tail of a boy's pet. The man is shocked and frightened and has to explain that he comes from a land where spiked tails have a horrific significance. Another time you get quick easy-to-miss little glimpses of everyday street scenes. A couple loading gigantic eggs into a cart on a street. A man getting a shave as a family of dog-sized hermit crabs scuttle underfoot. Street musicians surrounded by foxlike birds playing instruments you've never seen before. The book can feel like it's excerpting scenes from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari one moment and then In America the next. And I've rarely seen an illustrator capture images of laughter, real honest-to-goodness laughter, any better Tan has here. On his website, the artist credits much of his research to a variety of books about the immigrant experience, to say nothing of his father's memories of coming to Australia from Malaysia, interviews Tan conducted himself, and photographs that have found their way into this title as well.

In another part of his website, Tan explains that in this book, "the absence of any written description also plants the reader more firmly in the shoes of an immigrant character." Tan is undoubtedly at his best when he allows the reader the chance to feel the sense of wonder and confusion that comes from immersing yourself in a culture you're unfamiliar with. At one point our hero has dinner with a charming family. They eat odd spiky dishes that are prepared with unfamiliar torches. They play instruments you've never seen before and speak of escaping unimaginable, almost metaphorical, horrors. You are the main character in this book. His confusion is your confusion, and quite frankly he seems to adapt to his surroundings far better than I think most of us could. The language you encounter at all times is indecipherable. Even the clocks and the forms of transportation are magnificent and frightening. Yet at the same time, many of the people the man encounters are kind and try to help him navigate about. Tan knows too that if he makes the familiar just a little bit unfamiliar, that alone can confuse someone. So when the immigrants pull into a harbor, they see two large statues shaking hands in lieu of The Statue of Liberty.

I loved the animal companions that latch on to the humans in this book. They reminded me of Philip Pullman's, His Dark Materials daemons, though if they have any kind of spiritual significance it's left to the reader to determine what that might be. As Tan says on his site, "I am often searching in each image for things that are odd enough to invite a high degree of personal interpretation, and still maintain a ring of truth." He is not interested in the kind of symbolism where one object will stand for only one thing. He prefers to let people interpret his pictures in whatsoever way they prefer. If you feel these strange little animal companions are meant to symbolize how a person adapts to their new location, so be it. Tan isn't going to tell you what to think. He's just going to give you a helluva story and then let you do the rest yourself.

The art itself is phenomenal. Every language you see in this book is obviously made up, but no two languages you see here look the same. I repeat: You can tell the differences between separate imaginary languages. The realism of the style makes each picture look like a grainy sepia photograph taped inside a photo album. In fact, Tan has said that, "I was also struck with the idea of borrowing the `language' of old pictorial archives and family photo albums I'd been looking at, which have both a documentary clarity and an enigmatic, sepia-toned silence. It occurred to me that photoalbums are really just another kind of picture book that everybody makes and reads, a series of chronological images illustrating the story of someone's life." So many of the memories in this book have a buckled quality to their corners. They look bent or pasted into the book in some way. There are wrinkles and tears and pieces that have flaked off over time. The quality of the sepia changes too. Sometimes the story is black and white, sometimes a golden honeyed-brown. In one sequence an old man remembers marching off to war. When going through a town the pictures appear in warm tones. Then we watch just the man's feet as they step over rocks and streams and the dead, and the palette grows darker and starker until we've just the blurred image of feet running. There's a quick view of the men attacking and then a single full page spread of black and white bones in a field.

I didn't realize it at first, but I've been a fan of Shaun Tan's work for years. In 2003 I was living in Minneapolis, Minnesota during a time when their main library branch was undergoing renovations. On a whim I visited their off-site location and wandered through their children's room, looking for anything good. And there, standing all by its lonesome in the center of the space, was a striking picture book entitled, The Rabbits by John Marsden, illustrated by Shaun Tan. It was like nothing I'd ever read before. Published by the always magnificent Simply Read Books, the story was a crushing description of a native group of aboriginal animals destroyed utterly and totally by an invading society of rabbits. The words were heartbreaking in and of themselves, but the illustrations were the real draw. They contained magnificent intricate details hidden within page after page of text. Shaun Tan is like an industrialized and roughened William Joyce. His societies are full of dirt and muck and unspoken unstated horrors. They can reek of displacement more effectively than fifty pages of text could ever convey. So while "The Arrival" felt familiar to me, I didn't immediately associate it with its creator's former works. The feel of vast unfamiliar cityscapes is still present, but Tan leavens this latest offering with his human figures.

It seems almost unfair to the other publishers that Scholastic would have the wherewithal to publish not only this book but also Brian Selznick's, The Invention of Hugo Cabret in the same year. Scholastic has been especially good lately at locating books with strong visual narratives and adding them to their catalog. From the re-released colorized versions of Jeff Smith's Bone series to Raina Telegemeier's graphic novel adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club, Scholastic is pushing the envelope time and again. My deepest hope is that "The Arrival" finds its audience. Because I could write paragraphs and paragraphs more about the meticulous details and searing personal portraits found in this story, I'll just cut myself off now. Be sure to corner me at a party sometime, though, and I'll wax eloquent for days on end if you let me.

It takes a deft hand to draw a book that can tell an emotionally resonant story without a single word and that works entirely in the medium of pictures. Shawn Tan says that "Even the most imaginary phenomena in the book are intended to carry some metaphorical weight..." I cannot praise this book highly enough then. Every story, every face, and every person in this book feels as if they carry the with them a thousand memories. You read this book in no doubt that Tan's research and personal history has given "The Arrival" the hardest thing any novel can have; a soul. The best book published in America in 2007.

I saw this book amongst a few Dr.Seus books on the shelf today. It hit me pretty hard when I started going through it. Me and my girlfriend are from vastly different countries with a language barrier, and this book hit on those feelings of displacement. We have both spent time feeling like an outsider in an alien land and without words this book conveys every little detail of the pain and hope of arrival. When we get back to my country I will buy this book immediately!

As a librarian, I am familiar with the pros and cons of what is termed the 'graphic novel,' but to be honest have never seen such an argument for them. This book tells its tale entirely in pictures, no little 'bubbles' of thought to distract from its honest and beautiful theme...not that you need them. Its sepia-toned and varied artwork 'reads' almost like an old-fashioned film strip, the eye drawn from one to the next in a continuous story. I 'read' the story through in a few minutes, but there is so much gorgeous detail that I could spend a few minutes on each page. Each section feels like a separate work of art. Not to mention the extraordinary themes of sacrifices for love, overcoming the past, hope for the future, empathy with others, beauty in simplicity, and many many others. The perceptive reader will catch the references to the very real past of immigration and war among the fantastical, but even a younger reader may enjoy the story of the young man in a strange place, working to bring his family where there is still peace and beauty. This book shines like a jewel in a dark world. In my opinion, if there is any sense in the book-award-winning world, this will gain the shining accolades it well deserves. Buy it, read it, absorb it, read it again, and put its message into practice. The world will be a better place for the kindess of strangers.