A man gives his wife and daughter a last kiss and boards a steamship to cross the ocean. He’s embarking on the most painful yet important journey of his life – he’s leaving home to build a better future for his family. Shaun Tan evokes universal aspects of an immigrant’s experience through a singular work of the imagination. He does so using brilliantly clear and mesmerizing images. Because the main character can’t communicate in words, the book forgoes them too. But while the reader experiences the main character’s isolation, he also shares his ultimate joy.
This book is a wordless picturebook.
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I am fascinated by wordless books. I recently checked one out of the library for my grandson. “Four Hungry Kittens” it was unbelievable. I would love to have “The Arrival” for my collection. The concept of a wordless book is a wonderful to tell a story to anyone and especially to someone who can not read the language. My grandson told me the story of the four hungry kittens. It was adorable.
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[...] The Arrival (2006), by Shaun Tan, combines the main character’s inability to speak in the foreign tongue of his new homeland with a wordless picture book. Following the magnificent pictures, the reader is able to personally experience the main character’s feelings of isolation, while also sharing in his eventual joy. [...]
[...] from The University of Texas at Austin, shared the power of the visual image in the graphic novel The Arrival by Shaun Tan (2006) with linguistically different audiences in two workshops. We engaged the [...]