TITLE: The ArrivalAUTHOR: Shaun Tan
STARTED: August 20, 2009
FINISHED: August 20, 2009
PAGES: 128
GENRE: Graphic Novel
SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] Shaun Tan's stunning The Arrival chronicles -- in a wordless, wondrous pictorial narrative -- an immigrant's parting from his family and journey toward the future in a new land that is simultaneously ominous and hopeful. Told in drawings of varying sizes -- sometimes there are 12 panels to a page, sometimes 4; there are many full-page images -- Tan's tale juxtaposes the realistic with the phantasmagoric, giving shape to both the mundane material needs and the psychologically charged emotions of immigrant experience. Isolation, fear, want, sympathy, amity, joy: all are rendered palpable by the author's fecund visual invention. He has composed an imaginative landscape in which the uncertain bravery of an immigrant's journey is seen in its true grandeur; best of all, Tan has created a mesmerizing and mysterious "bookscape" in which readers young and old can wander again and again, poring over details, elaborating events, fashioning narrative destinies, discovering new worlds.
THOUGHTS: Tan has created a beautiful immigrant story that anyone can understand. The world he creates is foreign, whimsical, and easily understandable by all... even those who have never found themselves in an unknown environment.
The drawings are absolutely beautiful, full of emotion and creativity. What's even better, Tan crafts a moral message (acceptance, patience, and understanding) that does not whomp the reader over the head. He simply suggests it in his drawings.
RATING: 8/10 [Terrific]
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