The Arrival

The Arrival is a graphic novel for young readers by award-winning Australian illustrator and author, Shaun Tan. The father is packing his case, taking his leave of his wife and daughter to travel far away. There's the hint of something threatening that makes this necessary. A train journey, a ship takes him (and many others) a long way away (it must be a long way because there are sixty different cloud formations seen).

Then they arrive, are processed, and suddenly, here he is, on his own, away from everything familiar. He needs a place to stay, food to eat, a job. But when he asks a local, they are helpful and friendly. He somehow acquires a helpful pet. Others, refugees too, who have come before him, share their stories of what they left behind. He is welcomed. He works hard, and eventually, he can send money to his family, so they can join him.

Shaun Tan is such a talented artist and author! Without any words (well, any in a known language, at least) he tells this moving and heart-warming story. The pictures are evocative: from the passport photos on the endpapers, to the tiny images of detail that draw back to show their place in a larger image, to the stains and creases that make it look like a well-used travel document, to the fantastically different place of arrival, all are wonderfully done.

It's a story that those people who are grumbling about refugees need to read. And for anyone who has come from their home to settle in a strange land, a place where they know no-one, where the people dress differently, where the food and drink, the animals, the climate, the language, the customs and the people are all different from what they know, for these people, the story Tan so eloquently conveys with his art will strike a chord. Utterly brilliant!