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The Conversation
Penni Russon, Senior Lecturer, Literary Studies and Creative Writing, Monash University

Australian children’s classics: Shaun Tan’s essential migrant story still mesmerises, 20 years on

Shaun Tan

Holding Shaun Tan’s 2006 book The Arrival, you get the immediate impression of holding a found object – a family album or personal archive held together by hopes and dreams.

The book, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, is a wordless visual narrative about a man who leaves his wife and child to build a new future for his family. He arrives in a strange new city, a stranger in a strange land. Its story is told in comics form, with meticulous graphite pencil drawings, reproduced in sepia tones.

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