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"Shaun Tan's picture books have won numerous awards and been adapted to theater and animated film. His stunning wordless graphic novel The Arrival depicts the immigrant experience with unforgettable emotional impact. Get to know this illustrator from Perth, Australia by watching our November 2007 video interview. Learn how he got his start as a children's book illustrator, how he developed his ideas for The Arrival, and what inspired his vision for the book. Tan also describes the meaning behind a few key drawings in The Arrival, and offers advice for young artists."

Overview of the book 

The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope.