The Arrival by Shaun Tan.

The Arrival is a lovely wordless comic originally published by Scholastic Press in 2007. While it's gotten a lot of acclaim from folks like the New York Times, I simply put I don't see enough copies of this work floating around. I only came across it by chance and I most definitely believe that that should be changed. For starters, many the "big" names in contemporary comics like Satrapi, Spiegelman and McCloud have lauded the merits of this emotive silent film on paper. Here's a glimpse of this immigrants tale. The narrative is bound very nicely. It works well as a children's book given the structured approach to the plot. There are three immigrants tales that the reader is exposed to through the stories that others recount to the protagonist. There's a ton of symbolic symmetry throughout the work which makes repeated reads highly satisfying. The fantastic world that Tan has created has a lot of resonance with me because while not all the creatures in the new world that everyone immigrates to are soft, round and fuzzy creatures, each creature is a social one that highly appreciates the company of their human partners.

Open the book up and it's like going through a photo album from the 1890's. The characters created are marvelous.

Despite the lack of text. Reading this work felt like I was reexperiencing some of Chris Ware's work. I was once again reading images and looking at text (There is a language spoken in the land, but it is written in novel script based on characters used today. Funnily, it looks very much like Tan just mixed up a ton of IPA symbols and created the script that the fanciful city is plastered in).

One thing that did bug me, though was the narrative rigidity, then again the market that book was being distributed in was that of children's picture books a domain where very structured plots rule.

Obviously, I recommend reading this. Preferably you can experience this late at night on the floor by candlelight during a rainstorm.

Check it out. You're sure to like it.

For more on Shaun Tan, go here.