{"id":330,"date":"2009-01-13T23:47:22","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T03:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/13\/review-of-the-arrival-by-shaun-tan\/"},"modified":"2009-01-21T00:45:56","modified_gmt":"2009-01-21T04:45:56","slug":"review-of-the-arrival-by-shaun-tan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=330","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Arrival, by Shaun Tan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image364\" height=\"207\" alt=\"arrival.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/arrival.jpg\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The Arrival<\/em><\/p>\n<p>by Shaun Tan<\/p>\n<p>Starred Review.<br \/>\nArthur Levine Books, New York, 2006.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Arrival<\/em> is an amazingly effective story of the immigrant experience\u2014told in a graphic novel without any text\u2014or at least without any text that we can understand.<\/p>\n<p>The illustrations, beautifully drawn and wonderfully detailed, show us a man leaving his family behind to go on a long journey.\u00a0 The pictures seem to be telling a historical story of a man traveling to America.<\/p>\n<p>But then he arrives, and we see fantastic animals such as don\u2019t exist on earth (at least that I know about!).\u00a0 The letters of the text on signs are incomprehensible.\u00a0 The clothing is different and strange.\u00a0 The buildings are wild, unfamiliar shapes.<\/p>\n<p>The man must try to find shelter, learn how to use the machines in his dwelling, find food, (including figuring out what it looks like and how to eat it) and find work.\u00a0 He meets other immigrants and hears their stories.\u00a0 And above all, he wants to bring his wife and daughter there to join him.<\/p>\n<p>All this is shown to us without any words we can recognize.\u00a0 By using strange, alien-looking objects and animals, Shaun Tan communicates the strangeness immigrants experience far more effectively than he could ever have done with words.<\/p>\n<p>This book is shelved in the Young Adult section, but can span all ages from upper elementary to adults.\u00a0 The powerful, wonderfully crafted images will stick in the reader\u2019s mind for a long time to come.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0439895294\/sonderbooksco-20\" target=\"outside\">Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Find this review on the main site at:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/arrival.html\">www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/arrival.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Arrival by Shaun Tan Starred Review. Arthur Levine Books, New York, 2006. The Arrival is an amazingly effective story of the immigrant experience\u2014told in a graphic novel without any text\u2014or at least without any text that we can understand. The illustrations, beautifully drawn and wonderfully detailed, show us a man leaving his family behind [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,31,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-graphic-novel","category-stand-outs","category-starred-review","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}