The Arrival by Shaun Tan. NY: Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2007. ISBN-13: 978-0439895293. Q5/P5

            Unique in every way this book has no words but shows emotion through powerful artwork. It depicts the feelings of alienation and wonder in being an immigrant in a foreign country.  Illustrations are done in warm tones and look as though they are pages from a picture album.

CG, 8/5/09

 

 

The Arrival by Shaun Tan. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2006. ISBN: 9780439895293

 

 

  Annotation: A wordless story of an immigrant’s experiences in leaving family and home to come to, and adjust to, a strange new land

 

 

  Media: Pencil on paper, some sepia-tones

 

 

  Rating: 5Q/5P

 

 

  Curriculum connections: History, Social studies, World studies, Immigration, Creative writing, Art

 

 

  Grade level: Middle School, High School

 

 

  Literary devices:

 

    Repetition: Repetition is used pictorially as when the main character is leaving his homeland and the images of the ship portholes and his family photograph are repeated, but smaller and smaller or when he is working in the factory and the images are repeated

 

 

    Symbolism: The artist uses symbolism as when the portholes of the ship and the family photograph are repeated, but smaller and smaller, symbolizing the growing distance from home; the image and shadow of the dragon tail in his hometown symbolizing danger; the story without words, symbolizing the lack of communicable language for the immigrant

 

 

lss 30/07/09

 

 

TOP TEN

The arrival by Shaun Tan. New York: Arthur A. Levine, 2007.

ISBN: 978-0-43989-529-3

Annotation: A man leaves his family to travel to a strange country to find new opportunities – and finds out how unsettling and terrifying adjusting to a new land can be.

Age range: 6-12 grades

Media used by illustrator: sepia-toned pencil

Personal Rating: 5Q/4P

Curriculum Usage: ideal in a junior high or high school history class when discussing the early immigrant experience

 

Literary Device: Repetition - Tan frequently uses the symbol of birds to describe how her main character is feeling and adjusting to his surroundings.

 

Themes: alienation, loneliness, adjusting to a new life, leaving one's family.

 

Notes on Artwork: Tan uses sepia tones to describe the character's mood, with the panels darkening when the story's mood grows more somber. He also uses the images of monsters and shadows to describe the hardships he and his family face, and birds to illustrate how we feels throughout the book.

 

ateater/07-19-09

 

 

TOP TEN     The arrival by Shaun Tan. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2006.

            ISBN: 9780439895293

            Annotation: a man leaves his family to go into a new land where he feels lonely until he meets others that he can relate to. There are no words in the book but the pictures are extremely well done and representative of feelings.

            Media: pencil on paper

            Rating: 5Q/5P

  Armando Rivera 7-05-09

 

 

Arrival, The, by Shaun Tan. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007.

TOP TEN

ISBN: 978-0439895293

Annotation: A unique tale of a man’s journey into a new life, told entirely without words, through Tan’s detailed, fascinatingly otherworldly illustrations.

Illustrations: sepia-toned, graphite pencil

Theme: Tan’s theme is the shock of displacement and unfamiliarity immigrants feel when coming to a new country, and how home can be created in new places through human contact and kindness. He uses the wordless format, the mix of the fantastic and the mundane in the setting, and an invented written language to allow the reader to imagine how it would feel to be uprooted from everything familiar and confront a new life where the language and customs are totally alien.

5Q/5P

 

DM 7/5/09

 

 

The Arrival by Shaun Tan.  New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2006.

Summary: The Arrival tells a story, completely in pictures, of a man (perhaps a refugee) immigrating to a strange land.

 

Rating: 4Q, 4P

 

ISBN: 0439895294

 

Medium: Pencil

 

Curricular Opportunities: 

• Good for Creative Writing; English; History curriculum 

• Themes: immigration, migration, refugees

 

Age Group: All Ages

 

E.K. 7/1/09

 

 

Tan, S. (2006). The arrival. New York: A.A. Levine. 9780439895293 5Q/4P

Summary: A wordless picture book that demonstrates how a stranger in a new land can relate to fellow immigrants. Depicts the stories as they fled from danger, war and persecution toward a new life in a fantastical land.

Media: Pencil on paper

Personification: This title displays the personification of “alien” creatures through detailed illustrations, giving the odd characters human characteristics.

Curricular connections: Grades 8-12. History-immigration.

 

KEM 4/29/08

 

 

 

Tan, S. (2006). The Arrival. New York: Arthur A. Levine. ISBN: 978-0-439-89529-3

 

 

 

Annotation – Leaving his native land, a man learns how to survive in a foreign place, thus helping others on the way until he can bring his family to this new land.

 

 

 

Media – sepia toned illustrations made to resemble old photographs using graphite pencil and cartridge paper – “creative paralysis that comes with infinite possibility”

 

 

 

Rating – (NO text) 5 quality of illustrations and 5 popularity

 

 

 

Use of Theme and Curricular Connection – Tan discusses “belonging” in his pictures with great sympathy to the characters. When one leaves a “home” to travel to another place, it may be difficult to feel included. How one deals with displacement and adventures along the way, may contribute to the sense of belonging.

 

The immigrant experience has many common threads no matter where a person leaves from or where a person goes to. Usually, the language issue is a number one concern and it’s very interesting that Tan uses a wordless book to tell the reader about the difficulty of speaking a new language, getting food, finding a job, and connecting with a friend. The reader is like a stranger in a strange land only having a few visual clues to feel grounded in the story, which was very intentional, according to Tan. (See www.shauntan.net/books for a discussion of how he conceptualized the story.)

 

The reader continually surmises what may be behind the scenes in the picture story: What was the meaning of the giants? What do the menacing serpent things stand for? How will the protagonist earn enough money to bring his family to this new place? What does it mean to belong to someone, someplace, some thing, some animal?

 

Teachers could use this book as supplementary material when studying immigration into the US or another country. The book would stimulate the student’s ideas of why people leave their place and come to a new one; or what it would feel like to be in a place of unfamiliarity; or what would you have done differently if you had been the main character in the story?

Nancy

 

APA Citation	Tan, S. (2006). The arrival. New York: Scholastic.
ISBN	978-0-439-89529-3	Rating	5Q/5P	Top 10	yes
Media	Pencil, collage		Grades/Subject	All; civics, history, world studies, English
Annotation	Leaving behind his wife and child, a man sails to a strange city, making friends and learning behaviors to create a new life and bring his family over.

Art Discussion for Shaun Tan’s The Arrival

 

Resource: www.shauntan.net

 

 

Tan, S.  (2006).  The arrival.  New York: Scholastic Inc.  0439895294.  5Q/5P.  The artwork is pencil.

 

 

Powerful pictures depict a man’s journey to a new land and capture the horror and wonder that immigrant’s experience.

* Grade: 8-12, Subject: World History, Immigration

 

jw 05/06/08

 

 

 

 

 

 

ART DISCUSSION 

 

Several hundred images were needed to tell the story of an immigrant in a strange land. Tan borrows from a sort of archival image with sepia tones to draw the illustrations. He used graphite pencil and cartridge paper. Cartridge paper is a very heavy paper used for illustrating and drawing, and (according to Wikipedia) was originally used for bullet casing.

 

 

 

 

 

No text is used, so the pictures must be very detailed, but not necessarily easy to figure out. Tan intentionally made many of the images unfamiliar to the reader so the reader could experience how an immigrant might feel and react in a strange land. The detail of the images also allows the reader to take time and keep searching for meaning and understanding.

 

 

 

 

 

For Tan to get the right flow for the picture sequences, he consulted Scott McCloud’s excellent book, Understanding Comics. Tan also studied Japanese manga artists, since many of their panels have no text, either. He felt like the book was more like making a movie, so he constructed actual sets of scenes that he wanted to portray to find out if what he was thinking about could actually work. He had friends act out different action scenes and he videotaped all the sets and the action. He then studied it and added the action to rough drawings. Each page of the book took at least a week to draw, and there was always lots of rejects.

 

 

 

 

 

One challenge that Tan had to overcome was the “strange land” with its array of creatures and objects. The reader needs some sort of reference point to combine the fantasy with the reality so the story would make sense. Tan used his own memories of traveling to various places of the world and tried to get that feeling in the individual panels he created for the immigrant in the book.

 

 

 

 

 

He relied heavily on old photographs of immigrants arriving in the United States at the Ellis Island processing center in the early 1900s. He also used scenes from the same time period in Europe to create the towns and people the immigrant left and met in the new land. He wanted to express the rough and tough conditions in the land that was left and also in the new land by using serpents, giants, large statues or other fantastical forms. He is interested in allowing viewers to make their own interpretations and meanings in the art rather than trying to have a message conveyed through some kind of symbol.

Nancy

 

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan.  Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007.   978-0439895293.

Summary:  The wordless narrative of a man who flees his homeland to come to a new country and has to find his way around.

Analysis:  The lack of words throws the reader into the confusion and wonder of someone experiencing a new country for the first time.  The fantastic architecture and creatures are not meant to be fantasy -- this is just the way any country will look to someone experiencing it for the first time.  The illustration is incredibly beautiful; Tan draws amazingly expressive faces.  The "narrator" encounters many other immigrants and learns their stories, too.  Tan created The Arrival after 3 years of research into immigrant narratives at Ellis Island and the equivalents in Australia.  The creatures are adorable and even without words, the people all have such distinct characters.  Dominant themes of this book are immigration and discovery.

Illustrations: Black-and-white or sepia-toned soft pencil and watercolor illustrations meant to evoke old photographs.  They vary between full-page spreads and standard comic panels.

Rating: 5Q/5P

Curricular connections: Middle-to-high-school unit on immigration or refugees, or 5-12th grade art or creative writing unit.  Students could narrate one of the wordless stories or draw scenes from their own life in the same style.

--SLH