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The Arrival Paperback

4.8 2,408 ratings

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Arrival

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Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0734415869
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0734415868
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 7 - 16 years, from customers
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.81 x 0.51 x 9.06 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #954,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #29,466 in Graphic Novels (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.8 2,408 ratings

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Shaun Tan

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Shaun Tan grew up in Perth, Western Australia and works as an artist, writer and film-maker in Melbourne. He is best known for illustrated books that deal with social and historical subjects through dream-like imagery, widely translated throughout the world and enjoyed by readers of all ages. Shaun is the recipient of an Academy Award for short animation, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in Sweden and the Kate Greenaway Medal in the UK. He lives with his wife, two children, a dog, a parrot, some fish and stick insects.

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Customers praise the book's artwork for its beautiful and clever visual storytelling. They find the story fascinating and captivating, with interesting details that capture their imagination. The book is described as a wordless graphic novel that examines the experience of an immigrant without using a single word. Many readers find the book uplifting and humanity-affirming, serving as a powerful reminder that the immigrant experience is real. It is considered an enjoyable read for adults and children alike. The book blends history and popular culture with astonishing precision, making it relevant to modern times.

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Artwork Story quality Word use Uplifting Ages History Imagination Pacing

173 customers mention "Artwork"167 positive6 negative

Customers find the artwork in the book beautiful and clever. They appreciate the visual storytelling as emotional and inspiring. Readers describe the book as a picture book that shows an immigrant arriving in a new place, with realism approaching photographic quality, while also featuring a fantasy world filled with strange beasts.

"...No words in the entire book. I admire the art style which is a blend of richly detailed, realistic portraits of people and a sci-fi-esque highly..." Read more

""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..." Read more

"...This is to be given to a young girl who is Dyslexic as the story told in wordless pictures of a person moving to a country where they do not know..." Read more

"...In reality it is the art of mime in the world of graphic imagery which in and of itself creates its own unique genre. Fanastic! 5 Stars!!" Read more

136 customers mention "Story quality"130 positive6 negative

Customers find the story engaging and captivating. They appreciate the illustrations, which convey the universal human experience without words. The tale comes alive as older readers sort out the events and translate it. Readers describe the book as emotional and richly emotional, leaving a warm whirl of different impressions.

"...I admire the art style which is a blend of richly detailed, realistic portraits of people and a sci-fi-esque highly imaginative environment...." Read more

"...It uses advanced imagery and a high level nuanced story line using no prose...." Read more

"...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..." Read more

"...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..." Read more

96 customers mention "Word use"74 positive22 negative

Customers appreciate the book's wordless storytelling with body language and gestures. They find it a creative, universal story suitable for children. The concept is abstract and relatable for adults, providing a strong foundation in representational skills.

"...I fell in love with the story, told entirely using pictures. No words in the entire book...." Read more

"...an artist can convey an idea using simple pencil drawings and not using one word...." Read more

"...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,..." Read more

"...is "Show, don't tell," and Shaun Tan's lovely, fragile, evocative wordless picture book is the ultimate expression of that rule...." Read more

56 customers mention "Uplifting"56 positive0 negative

Customers find the book uplifting and heartfelt. They say it serves as a powerful reminder that the immigrant experience is common. The book engages students in deep discussions about empathy and compassion. It helps them develop an understanding of immigration and history. Readers say the story is a tribute to brave souls who have left their countries to offer their families a better life.

"...Our copy will be useful for discussions with our exchange students and as an interesting, beautifully illustrated coffee table book...." Read more

"...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..." Read more

"...America, immigrants tend to be mistrusted, this book serves as a powerful reminder that the immigrant experience is fundamental to our heritage...." Read more

"...Very life- and humanity-affirming, warm and generous. Can't recommend it enough for people of all ages." Read more

24 customers mention "Ages"24 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book for all ages. They find it suitable for both adults and children, and they say it's an enjoyable read for all. The book is ideal for reading over and over with young readers, teaching acceptance and adaptability. Readers mention that it captivated everyone of every age in their family over the Christmas holidays.

"...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..." Read more

"...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...." Read more

"...This is a picture book for older children and adults--and why shouldn't they have something this strange and wonderful?..." Read more

"...Appropriate for all ages, even non-readers, this book is a real keeper. I bought a copy for each of my children." Read more

21 customers mention "History"21 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's history. They find it combines history and popular culture with astonishing precision. The parallels to American history are interesting. The story is relevant to events happening right now, making you ponder the stakes for immigrants. The worlds and living creatures are full in their story, transcending race and ethnicity. Readers appreciate the remarkable place in the history of illustration, graphic novels, and storytelling.

"...his remarkable and gorgeous drawings of strange and wonderful places and creatures...." Read more

"...He has such wonderful imagination filled with magical worlds and creatures that are all uniquely his...." Read more

"...to be treasured and pondered over are the wonderfully drawn, ethnically diverse faces that the artist portrays on the book's endpapers...." Read more

"...turned the pages, and it's amazing what she observed and related back to earlier pictures...." Read more

12 customers mention "Imagination"12 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's images compelling and imaginative. They describe it as a unique, charming graphic novel that intrigues and delights readers of all ages. The rustic feel and surrealist elements are fun for them. Overall, readers appreciate the humor, creativity, and artistry of this remarkable book.

""The Arrival" by Shaun Tan is perhaps the most unique and charming book to come along in years...." Read more

"...This is really special...." Read more

"...and savoring the haunting art, the moving story, the sheer fun of the surrealist elements, I've been looking for another graphic novel this good...." Read more

"...With humor, creativity and artistry, this remarkable book makes us experience what it feels to arrive in a new place where all is different from..." Read more

8 customers mention "Pacing"8 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's pacing and illustrations. They find the story moving and beautiful, with an overall feeling of tolerance and acceptance. The illustrations depict the terror of the story. Readers appreciate the kindnesses and gratitude for passing on kindnesses.

"...The world Shaun Tan creates is familiar and surreal, welcoming and sweet and terrifying at times...." Read more

"...A moving and artistic look at the reasons people immigrate and the struggles they have to integrate into a new environment. Loved it!" Read more

"...of strangers reaching out to help strangers and the gratefulness of passing on kindnesses, and the quirks, foibles, misunderstandings, loneliness,..." Read more

"...A feeling of tolerance and acceptance is presented throughout the story and transcends race and ethnicity...." Read more

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Top reviews from the United States

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Laura
Excellent graphic novel, makes you ponder the stakes for immigrants
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2023
Verified Purchase

My husband checked this book out of our public library. He wanted the rest of the family to look at the book. Our 2 teens were busy with the start of school so I picked it up.

I fell in love with the story, told entirely using pictures. No words in the entire book. I admire the art style which is a blend of richly detailed, realistic portraits of people and a sci-fi-esque highly imaginative environment.

I immediately ordered a copy of the book for us and one for a friend who is an ESL teacher (English as a Second Language). Some of her kids come to America knowing zero English. What a great way to immediately show them a book with substance that seeks to show we understand a smidgen of what they are going through.

Our copy will be useful for discussions with our exchange students and as an interesting, beautifully illustrated coffee table book.

There are multiple things I love about this book but here are my top two:
1. As the immigrant meets people the story shifts to the new person’s immigration story. There are at least 4-5 different stories included, each touched my heart.
2. There is an underlying theme of the seasoned immigrants helping the new immigrants, passing along skills, information, directions, food—the cycle is woven throughout the pages of this book.

We highly recommend this book and are looking forward to exploring more of the artist’s work.

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7 people found this helpful

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David Crumm
Amazingly, Shaun Tan Shows Us Our Own World Through a Newcomer's Eyes
Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2008
Verified Purchase
"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.

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16 people found this helpful

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Phred
Wordless, Inspirational, Precious, Mesmerizing
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2024
Verified Purchase
Artist, Pencillier Shaun Tan has gifted us with a book of his art. Over-simplified, it is a wordless graphic Novel. An immigrant leave his home and family, entering a world almost familiar but to him strange and alien. Maps, signage, even animals are fantastic but must be made , to him comprehensible.

In sepia tones, suggesting this is a collection of old photographs , we follow a nameless, any man immigrant, traveling ahead of his family in the hopes of getting them all away from of the sinister reptilian something haunting his home.
I cannot speak of it further except in superlatives.

For the rest I am forcibly reminded:
“And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.”
Exodus 2:22

Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Exodus 23:9

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4 people found this helpful

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John G Lucardie
2nd time purchased.
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2025
Verified Purchase
Second time that I have purchased this book. This is to be given to a young girl who is Dyslexic as the story told in wordless pictures of a person moving to a country where they do not know the language or how to read said language reflects to a degree the struggle they themselves endure with reading. This is to try to show that books are not the enemy and that there are more than one way to "read".

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Claire Westfall
Beautiful
Reviewed in Canada on August 18, 2023
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Beautiful, artistic, touching.

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Corinne Garau
Au pays de l'IMAG(E)inaire...
Reviewed in France on January 31, 2023
Verified Purchase
L'exile commence à l'arrivée, mais aussi au départ.
Voyage en image dans cet air qu'est l'exil,
où chaque moment est impressionnant,
où chaque page nous émerveille.
Les dessins sont magnifiques!

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Elena Poritckaia
Una novela gráfica excelente
Reviewed in Spain on November 13, 2022
Verified Purchase
Es una novela gráfica excelente y muy conmovedor. Lo aconsejo a todos, aunque ponga que es para niños. Transmite muy bien la experiencia de un emigrante en un país lejano. Muy bonito.

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Liana Thalia Readeya
Experience
Reviewed in the Netherlands on May 30, 2022
Verified Purchase
It was more a experience than a book. There are no words but somehow you can read the thoughts and feelings. A great book about immigrating.

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Pascal Mario
Visual Narrative must have
Reviewed in India on May 15, 2021
Verified Purchase
Beautifully illustrated silent graphic novel. Highly recommended for anyone who's into Visual narratives . It has a vintage old look ( wrinkleed pages, stains, stretched leather) that gives a feeling of owning a piece of a world that was in the past yet the narrative is beyond its time. Your pre conceived notions on immigration will have a different perspective. The nature of it being a silent graphic novel, gives the readers an experience of being in an unsettling, unfamiliar, and strange place and struggling to communicate without the aid of any language.

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Pascal Mario

Visual Narrative must have

Reviewed in India on May 15, 2021
Beautifully illustrated silent graphic novel. Highly recommended for anyone who's into Visual narratives . It has a vintage old look ( wrinkleed pages, stains, stretched leather) that gives a feeling of owning a piece of a world that was in the past yet the narrative is beyond its time. Your pre conceived notions on immigration will have a different perspective. The nature of it being a silent graphic novel, gives the readers an experience of being in an unsettling, unfamiliar, and strange place and struggling to communicate without the aid of any language.

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Top reviews from the United States

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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent graphic novel, makes you ponder the stakes for immigrants

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly, Shaun Tan Shows Us Our Own World Through a Newcomer's Eyes

5.0 out of 5 stars Wordless, Inspirational, Precious, Mesmerizing

5.0 out of 5 stars 2nd time purchased.

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful

5.0 out of 5 stars Au pays de l'IMAG(E)inaire...

5.0 out of 5 stars Una novela gráfica excelente

5.0 out of 5 stars Experience

5.0 out of 5 stars Visual Narrative must have

Visual Narrative must have

Images in this review

Excellent graphic novel, makes you ponder the stakes for immigrants

Amazingly, Shaun Tan Shows Us Our Own World Through a Newcomer's Eyes

Wordless, Inspirational, Precious, Mesmerizing

2nd time purchased.

Beautiful

Au pays de l'IMAG(E)inaire...

Una novela gráfica excelente

Experience

Visual Narrative must have