Author Sita Brahmachari‘s latest book is Car Wash Wish, her second novella for Barrington Stoke, a UK publisher who specialise in making books accessible to struggling readers, with a special emphasis on dyslexia. It’s an inter-generational story … Continue reading ...
By: Betsy Bird,
on 5/22/2012
#65 The Arrival by Shaun Tan
30 points
This book is Epic. It doesn’t just “tell” an immigrant’s story, it magically (or I suppose, skillfully) brings us INTO the very experience. - Aaron Zenz
Because it’s a richly imagined, beautifully rendered, wordless graphic narrative of immigration, dislocation, and hope. - Phillip Nel
#68 then. #65 now. There’s no question it belongs on this list.
So is it a picture book? Well, let’s see. It tells a story entirely with pictures and not a single word (or, at least, not a single word we can understand). You might call it a graphic novel too, except it eschews thought bubbles and speech balloons. Yet it does break itself into panels quite often… but can’t the same be said of many picture books, like The Adventures of Polo and the like? Is there an age limit to it? Maybe (there are some scary scenes) but when do children stop reading picture books? Many read them for years, though often on the sly when around peers or siblings.
I hereby proclaim that until someone can pin down a definite genre for a book as amazing, miraculous, and downright fun as The Arrival, here it shall remain on this Top 100 Books poll.
My review back in the day of it said this about the plot: “A man prepares to leave his family for a new world. Tearfully they let him go as he boards a ship for another land. Once he arrives, however, he finds himself at a loss. Everything from the language to the buildings to the birds is strange here. The reader of this book sympathizes easily with the man since author/illustrator Shaun Tan has created a world that is just as odd to us as it is to our protagonist. Appliances consist of confusing pulls and toggles. People live and work in plate and cone-shaped structures, traveling via dirigibles and strange ship-shaped machinations of flight. As the man proceeds to discover how to find lodging, food, and work, he meets other immigrants who tell their own stories of hardship and escape. Through all this, our man grows richer for his experiences and even grows to love the odd little white-legged cat-sized tadpole creature that follows him everywhere. By the end, his family has arrived as well and the last image in the book is of his daughter as she helps another immigrant get directions in this dazzling and magnificent city.”
Are there those amongst ye who have not read this book? Then go to it. I could wax rhapsodic for days on end about the power and beauty of this story, but I’ll let the experts do it for me.
The New York Times said of it, ” ‘The Arrival’ tells not an immigrant’s story, but the immigrant’s story. . . The effect is mesmerizing. Reading ‘The Arrival’ feels like paging through a family treasure newly discovered up in the attic.”
Booklist said, “Filled with subtlety and grandeur, the book is a unique work that not only fulfills but also expands the potential of its form.”
The Washington Post said, “Hundreds of sepia-toned drawings, some tiny, some panoramic, all pulsing with detail, combine to produce an effect reminiscent of silent movies or mime, the absence of words forcing the eye and the brain to work harder.”
And Kirkus said, “It’s an unashamed paean to the immigrant’s spirit, tenacity and guts, perfectly crafted for maximum effect.”
As of this post, Shaun Tan has still not had a chance to visit Ellis Island. And any questions you might have about the
By: Aline Pereira,
on 12/5/2011
Thanks to Zoe Toft at Playing by the Book for alerting me to this video of Shaun Tan’s award winning book The Arrival set to a musical score on the Sydney Opera House’s website.
Watch highlights of Shaun Tan’s visual masterpiece The Arrival featuring a live score by Ben Walsh and The Orkestra of the Underground.
The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images. With his Orkestra of the Underground, Ben Walsh pooled a diverse range of musical talent and composed a score to accompany Tan’s beautiful illustrations in a rare and unique audio-visual experience.
Click here to watch
By: Aline Pereira,
on 8/26/2011
On Wednesday, Older Brother, Little Brother and I had the thrill of hearing this year’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner Shaun Tan speak at Seven Stories in Newcastle, during his whistle-stop visit to the UK. I’ve loved his work since being mesmerised by The Arrival four years ago; and we’ve also had the privilege of featuring Shaun’s work in our PaperTigers Gallery. Shaun’s picture books truly tap into something essential in our existence so that no matter how old you are and whatever your life experience, there is something there for everyone to absorb and distill. His books have had a big impact on the boys too, and it was a real eye-opener for them to meet their creator and hear about the drawn out process and sheer hard work that goes into producing a book. Now we are all desperate to see the Oscar-winning short of The Lost Thing!
Older Brother was most struck by Shaun saying that imperfection was a “very important concept for an artist”; and that he is always aiming for simplicity, because it’s through that apparent simplicity that he can achieve layer upon layer of meaning. Then accompanying the text with unexpected illustrations to create further tensions – but he pointed out that he wouldn’t call his work surreal per se: rather, the unexpected juxtaposition of familiar objects in his work is what is surreal.
Little Brother especially loved the first in Shaun’s series of cartoons depicting a day in his life: Waking to the Sound of a Solitary Cicada – a huge cicada looming in through the open window. He’s still laughing about that (but, as is so often the case with Shaun’s work, for me, the more I think about it, the more the funniness is tempered with a feeling of unease…). Little Brother also came home thinking about the humor and tensions achieved by people/creatures doing extrordinary things as though they are completely normal – like feeding Christmas decorations to a huge, friendly monster-machine aka the Lost Thing. And when Shaun pointed out that, as per the element of the familiar present in all his creations, the Lost Thing is a cross between a dog, a horse and an elephant, yes, you can absolutely see it.
I was bowled over by Shaun’s generosity in handing over his creations to their audience with an open invitation to interpret. He told us how in his writing, he pares the words down, excluding any emotional words because he wants the readers to have space to bring their own interpretation to his work. And he took us through his creation of the water buffalo giving directions to the little girl with a box from Tales from Outer Suburbia (you can see it in Shaun’s interview with Drawn here): how initially there was something peeping out of the box, and how he felt it wasn’t fair on the viewer to be so prescriptive, so he left it up to each person to imagine what was in the box.
It was also a real treat to see two extracts from the animated version of The Lost Thing and to hear about the ten-year project to bring the book to the screen, including Shaun’s determination to retain the fl
By: Aline Pereira,
on 8/16/2008
The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBC) is proud to sponsor the longest running children’s festival in Australia: Children’s Book Week. Celebrating its 63rd birthday this year, Children’s Book Week will take place August 16th -22nd with the theme “Fuel your Mind”. Schools and public libraries from all over Australia will spend the week celebrating books and Australian authors and illustrators. Classroom teachers, teacher librarians and public librarians will offer a plethora of activities: author and illustrator visits, workshops, theatre acts, competitions, and storytelling relating to the theme in an effort to highlight the importance of reading.
CBCA is a volunteer run, not-for-profit organization comprised of individual members who are passionate about children’s and young adult literature. To help promote Children’s Book Week as well as their Book of the Year Awards, they offer a range of merchandise that can be purchased to decorate schools and classrooms for Book Week. This year Australian author and illustrator Shaun Tan, winner of the 2007 CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award for his book The Arrival, has designed the vibrant, eye-catching posters.
On Friday, August 15th, as a kick-start to Children’s Book Week, the CBCA will announce and present their 2008 Book of the Year awards in the following categories: Older Readers, Younger Readers, Early Childhood, Picture Book, and the Eve Pownall Award for Information Books. The shortlists for these awards were announced in April and at the same time the unique CBCA Junior Judges’ Project (JJP) was launched. The CBCA Junior Judges’ Project encourages children to do their own judging of the shortlisted books in the annual CBCA Book Awards, based on similiar criteria to those used by the CBCA Book of the Year judges. Once the Short List is announced, students guided by their teachers are encouraged to read the shortlisted books and, based on the judging criteria, select their Winner and two Honour Books in one or more categories and cast their votes online, either through their teachers or individually.
By: Aline Pereira,
on 3/25/2008
This year I gave my son a picture book for Christmas–nothing earthshaking about that until you consider that my son is in his early thirties and graduated from pictures to the printed word several decades ago. The book is one that my neighborhood bookstore has been selling to adults ever since it came to their shelves, and when I opened it I knew I had to give it to someone I loved. The book is Shaun Tan’s gorgeous book without words, The Arrival, and it is one that is featured on the Papertigers Gallery.
I have given picture books to adults for years, ever since I first began my life as a bookseller, and the illustrators that I yearn to give and to own are most often from Australia, a corner of the world that is covered quite wonderfully on Papertigers by Charlotte.
Just before I moved from the arena of children’s books to a life in SE Asia, a book came to me from Australia that has haunted my imagination ever since I opened it. It is a perfect example of how words and pictures magically combine to create a book that lives forever in the hearts and minds of readers–The Wolf by Margaret Barbalet, illustrated by Jane Tanner. No other book that I have found illustrates so vividly the crippling effects of fearing the unknown, and how facing that fear can turn it into something wonderful. Each picture is a painting, showing a family whose lives become imprisoned by their fear of the wolf who comes closer and closer to their house at night. When it is finally confronted by one of the children, it is revealed as a friendly, lonely creature who only wants shelter and love. Author and illustrator have blended their artistry to create a masterpiece that resonates to all age groups, on many different levels of understanding. If I could, I would give it to everyone I know.
And now–a plea for help–at the same time that The Wolf came into my life, another picture book from Australia also arrived in my workplace and I can no longer remember the title, author, or illustrator. The book however has proved to be unforgettable. It is the story of children playing an imaginary game in the backyard–the text shows the fantasy that the children have created while the full-page pictures show the reality of the game–the garbage can lids that are their shields and their dog who is the prey that they seek. It’s a brilliant depiction of the world of the imagination and I would love to find it again. Is there anybody out there who can steer me toward it?
By: Mike Shuttleworth,
on 2/27/2008
…gets underway on Tuesday 4 March, with five writers, plus publisher Andrew Kelly and a surprise or two. The first Booktalkers features Lee Fox, Elizabeth Fensham, Allayne Webster, Sean Condon and James Roy. Venue is the Village Roadshow Theatrette, State Library of Victoria. We kick off at 6.30pm and the event is fully catered. Admission is [...]
It is wonderful to hear about your giving The Arrival to your son - I have been telling everyone about it, adults and young people alike, since I first received a review copy and I think it is one of my favorite books of the past few years. I have told everyone about it and shown my copy to many people - and I have had it on order from my local bookshop for over a year to give to our godchildren - but it still hasn’t hit the bookshelves in a major way in the UK. It is very frustrating! But I cannot part with my copy so everyone I want to give it to will have to wait
Shaun Tan’s books are so beautiful that I always feel I should frame them rather than put them on a bookshelf.
The book is “Drac and the gremlin” by Allan Baillie and also illustrated by Jane Tanner, published about twenty years ago.
Sian, thank you! I am truly grateful, and so happy that now I might be able to find a copy or two.
I just checked my local library’s website and they have “The Arrival” on the shelf, so I will have to make a quick trip there today to check it out. Sounds great!
I just finished reading “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” written by Brain Selznick. It is the story of twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931. When Hugo, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized. “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” is novel of 525 pages but 300 of the pages are black and white drawings which help tell the story. It is a fabulous book which appeals to children as well as adults!
When I worked at a bookstore last year, The Invention of Hugo Cabret was a huge hit with adults there–one co-worker who was reading it aloud to her son at night finally couldn’t stand it and gobbled the whole thing in an evening once the bedtime story hour was over.