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Response to "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan


Although I only read it once, everything about it was clearer to me than looking through a glass window of a small cafe somewhere up the hills of a small town. I have not considered picture books as much until now because my thoughts were that they were targeted towards children, but at this very moment I realized this was a mistake. Yes, picture books can still be produced for a children and for adults, I could tell that this book was for all ages. But what is interesting is that depending on the reader's age, the story began to relate to certain events that occur in this very present of our lives. Now I had never considered immigration to be part of the story until someone made it very clear that it was being presented from beginning to end. Even if I have not re-read it, from my recollection of it everything began to make more sense. From the family's escape from their home to the father's struggle to live in a new world to find out in the end that he was doing all for his family to come back to him certainly represents how many families in today's immigration will go above and beyond to find peace for their loved ones from somewhere they could not even think about going back to. What Shaun Tan and the people that worked with him on this book for five years had done was reach out to both children and adults and gave them this understanding of what immigration is like. Without a single word, it taught me the importance of the lengths people had gone to leave a certain place and try to start a new life. Instead of having to read page by page on certain histories, the images invoked in "The Arrival" made it far more clear to understand. The commitment the father took to find work to bring his family over, the connection between him and the immigrants who had their reasons to leaving their country, the adjusting to society, everything about the story kept me wanting to read more until the very end I am glad I did so.

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