The Arrival by Shaun Tan (3 points)

     The Arrival is a wordless graphic novel, but no words are necessary to portray the emotional and otherworldly journey the main character endures. The illustrations were so beautiful. Every page was successful in telling a cohesive story. I was worried that I would have a difficult time following along with a piece like this, but there were no issues thanks to the illustrator's smart decision making. In the beginning of the story we learn that the man has a family, a wife and daughter. He has to flee the country to go to another place, this world is very surreal. Alien like creatures roam the sky and almost every person owns one as a pet. The main character struggles to understand a new language and communicate with others. It's interesting because the language looks completely made up. It's made up of symbols that don't resemble anything specific. This allows the reader to feel just as confused as the character and forces you to rely on the images even more. There are so many moments in the story where emotions are portrayed so clearly. One that stood out to me personally was the old man that the character meets while working at his factory job. like a few other characters in the story, the old man explains how he arrived to this strange world. He tells his backstory, but we learn the story mostly through small images of his shoes travelling through war, back home and then to war again only to end in disaster in his hometown. The shoes start by walking on a cobblestone type of ground, to sand, water, broken rubble and even dead bodies. The shoes then speed up and the last panel is blurred to suggest running or escaping from the chaos. Every image was successfully executed to tell the story. I thought the book was amazing, I want to buy it!