One day when I was at the library, one book especially drew my attention. It was a picture book made by artist Shaun Tan named The Arrival. This book was very special that it inspired me so much. The reason that I used “picture book” to describe the book was because I couldn’t distinguish whether it was a comic book or an illustration book. In the book, author Shaun Tan uses panels of images as the way which comic books use to tell the story about a person’s arrival in a new strange world. But unlike simplified images and characters in comic books, he instead sketches every image that they’re all looked realistic and full of details.
The most interesting thing about the book is that different people may have different understanding of the story because the book has no word at all. The reason that the book attract me so much is because I like the idea of not putting any word, any explanation, to the sequential panels that it allows the readers to tell the story themselves. Even though without the help of word, sometimes people may get confuse about what happened, it gets the readers to think again and gain and to make guesses. It is the process of guessing and thinking about the story that made this book so successful. The story is about a person’s arrival to a strange world with various culture, people, and creatures; and about how he settles his life in the strange world through finding a job and learning the alien language. Because there is no word in the book, it gives the reader a feeling that themselves are also the ones seeking information of the new world and to get understanding of what is going on in the new world. I believe this book is a successful book which regarding to design, it connects people’s emotion and feeling with the story deeply. 
images from: steamtrainsandghosts.wordpress.com
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