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Whistle Stopper - The Arrival
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List Price: $19.99
Our Price: $8.00
Your Save: $ 11.99 ( 60% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Arthur A. Levine Books
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780439895293
ISBN: 0439895294
Label: Arthur A. Levine Books
Manufacturer: Arthur A. Levine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: 2007-10-01
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Studio: Arthur A. Levine Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing and Beautiful!
Comment: I found out about this marvelous book through Neil Gaiman's Journal. The Arrival was my first graphic novel and I was awed by the intensity and yet nuanced storytelling accomplished with absolutely no text!
Even though the country the immigrant comes to is very foreign in some major ways and the feeling of dislocation and fear are strong for the man who is the main character, still there are little touches of familiarity in this strange place, and the people open up to him.
The drawing is quietly compeling, and I found myself pouring over the pages, finding new delights on every street corner and windowsill.
I would recommend this book to all ages; after I read it, I shared it with my granddaughters, and they loved it, too!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Powerful imagery makes its point
Comment: This book tells the story of an immigrant, who leaves his homeland for reasons that are unclear but definitely seem to be unpleasant. He is overwhelmed by his new home, and absolutely nothing seems familiar, to the point of no longer being recognizable. The food is different, the language is different, the currency is different, the animals are different, and he cannot read the writing. His inability to read the writing is demonstrated quite graphically, literally, by having all the writing use an alphabet other than any I have seen from any country on Earth. He must find a place to live, a job so that he can support himself, and figure out how to survive. The foreignness and the overwhelming strangeness of the land is demonstrated by having many ordinary objects be much larger than normal, as well as having a definite surreal atmosphere pervade the entire book. Will the immigrant find a way to live? Can he find happiness? Can he be reunited with his family, by helping them be able to join him?
This might be the most unusual book I have "read," and it is hard to review it. Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret was about seventy percent illustrations, blended seamlessly with text, yielding a riveting tale. The Arrival is one hundred percent illustrations, that appear to be pencil drawings. The illustrations are excellent in quality, making this at least as much an art collection as a novel. The content varies from photograph-like to surrealism, slightly reminiscent of a blend of Van Gogh and Rivera. The paper is very high in quality and the cover looks almost like an ancient leather-bound manuscript. The entire book has an antique look and feel to it, with the paper looking aged and slightly water stained around the edges, and a sepia tone to the images.
My initial impression of the book was that the author had gone a bit too far in making his point. By taking the unfamiliar and portraying it as surreal and unearthly, I thought this was an example of overstatement causing the author to lose track of his own point. But, this is a book that, once read, keeps echoing and reverberating. I now think I was taking it too literally, at first, as the more lasting impression is one of the book having been truly haunting and, despite the downright alien (as in extraterrestrial) look of many of the image, Shaun Tan has genuinely captured the feel of chronic and pervasive displacement experienced by many immigrants. Again, like some artwork, the impact of this book is not immediate, but in its lasting effect.
Personal note: One the cover of the book is an image of the protagonist, and an animal that is not of this reality. That animal, the protagonist's pet and companion in the strange land, became symbolic of what I think of the book: at first, I saw it as a prime example of the author going too far; now, I want a critter like that! In a way, you can judge this book by its cover.
-- Chris McCallister, author of Coming Full Circle
Customer Rating:
Summary: An amazing book and more!
Comment: Saying that it is an amazing book would be selling it short! Like all fine works of art it is to be cherished. Go grab a copy and 'see' it if you haven't or even if you have!
Customer Rating:
Summary: The plight of the immigrant in graphic novel form
Comment: This book tells the story of a man who leaves his home and family and comes to start a new life for them all in an alien culture. Because The Arrival is a graphic novel that takes as it's setting an imaginary land with a unique language, the reader is able to enter the world as the protagonist does, completely at the mercy of the world he's trying to call home. The fine and suggestive illustrations allow the reader to experience the confusion, isolation, terror and wonder of this journey. This book helped me to appreciate the struggles my own ancestors, and everyone else in America's ancestors, must have faced in their passage of immigration. I also found a new compassion for those future citizens hoping to live within our borders, whose difficulties and challenges they must face daily. In California you meet so many different nationalities, so many people trying to make a new life for themselves and their families, and they're doing it for the most part with dignity and purpose, starting with the simple desire to begin again in a land of opportunity. The Arrival depicts this ambition with genuine sincerity and truth. I highly recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Perfect.
Comment: Shaun Tan, The Arrival (Arthur A. Levine, 2007)
There's a single panel, towards the end of Chapter 2 of Shaun Tan's remarkable graphic novel The Arrival, that sums up a great deal of what you need to know about the book. Previously, a man has left his wife and daughter behind to emigrate to a new land, where everything is unfamiliar to him. When, despite the cultural and language barriers he faces, he manages to find lodging, he pulls out his suitcase and opens it. Instead of the things he packed, what we see is his wife and daughter, sitting and eating a meal alone in the house he used to share with them. Everything about the scene is rendered in exquisite detail, and it's a perfect synecdoche for Tan's approach to his material here; the fabulist attitude laced with a hefty dollop of surrealism, the feel of how it is to be a stranger in a strange land, and Tan's sure hand with his illustrations, right down to the way he gives us the kind of cracking you see on old photographs.
As our nameless protagonist journeys through the city, he meets other immigrants, and he assimilates culturally by listening to their own stories of what it was like to emigrate from their homelands to this wonderful city where all of them have ended up. Tan tells a universal-- clichéd, perhaps-- story in such a unique way that I would think it impossible not to be charmed. This is fine, fine work indeed, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. You need to read this book. *****
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Editorial Reviews:
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"A shockingly imaginative graphic novel that captures the sense of adventure and wonder that surrounds a new arrival on the shores of a shining new city. Wordless, but with perfect narrative flow, Tan gives us a story filled with cityscapes worthy of Winsor McCay." -- Jeff Smith, author of Bone
"A magical river of strangers and their stories!" -- Craig Thompson, author of Blankets
"Magnificent." -- David Small, Caldecott Medalist
In a heartbreaking parting, a man gives his wife and daughter a last kiss and boards a steamship to cross the ocean. He's embarking on the most painful yet important journey of his life - he's leaving home to build a better future for his family. Shaun Tan evokes universal aspects of an immigrant's experience through a singular work of the imagination. He does so using brilliantly clear and mesmerizing images. Because the main character can't communicate in words, the book forgoes them too. But while the reader experiences the main character's isolation, he also shares his ultimate joy.
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