The Arrival, Shaun Tan

I am very familiar with Shaun's work because of his children's books as well as previously "read" the Arrival. He is a masterful storyteller in my opinion, displaying his skills of making the story accessible without word bubbles and then having a nice splash page to put the world on display. Each of those small expressions illustrated lead to a stronger emotional story punch, right up to the finale and the way it is constructed somehow seems unexpected. The monotone against that background gives the story a vintage feel, like this was a story from the 30s or 40s, when considering his background this story of people immigrating to this new and scary world becomes even more important. The emotion in the faces and the story transitions were so fluid, and when our protagonist is feeling alone and isolated I really felt for him being seperated from his family. This is such a far reaching and relatable story in my eyes, my parents immigrated here to the US so it might have meant more to me because of that.