When I first opened Shaun Tan’s “The Arrival” I was surprised to find that the book had no words, besides a brief description in the beginning, and a page at the end thanking all the people who helped and sources of information. The last time I read a picture book was so long ago that i can’t even distinctly remember it. But even then the picture book had words, sentences, and a general story line no matter how simple. However, this book was still different than any book i have experienced in my memory. Usually a book can paint a scene in my mind, but this book was the painted scene, and I was the narrator.

This creates a unique feeling when you “read” the book. You could read it multiple times, and each time create a new story to be told by the pictures. I write read in apostrophes because technically you are not reading. Technically you are also not watching as you would television. This adds another unique perspective only found in a radical book such as “The Arrival.” You are not reading, watching, but rather looking at pictures and creating a storyboard in your head.

Although everyone who reads this book perceives it differently, the concept behind the story is still the same. Immigration, is something extremely unique to a big city such as New York. Most inhabitants of New York City come from families who immigrated decades ago, and prospered in a vastly different world. Likewise, my family immigrated to New York searching for opportunities beyond their farming and fishing way of life in the Italian island of Sicily. The hieroglyphic like symbols express the difficulty of learning a new language, and the confusion created by maps and these unknown symbols. Similar to the type of book, the theme of the book, immigration, is a general experience with millions of unique perspectives which can be shown through the different faces that line the insides of the cover of the book.