Book Reviews by Jamie Morris

Bibliographic Data

Tan, Shaun. 2007. The Arrival. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books. ISBN: 0439895294.

Plot Summary

A man travels from his homeland to a new country to find a place to live and a job, then has his family join him in the new country.

Critical Analysis

Written for ages 9-12, this wordless graphic novel tells the story of one man’s journey to a new country to find a new home and a job so he can bring his family there to live with him. Beautifully drawn, the artwork is so detailed that it almost looks like one is looking at old photographs. However, the images used of animals and places often have a strange quality to them, helping the reader understand the confusion and wonder a traveler feels when first arriving to a new land.

As he searches for a place to stay and work, the man meets other immigrants and learns their stories and experiences that brought them to where they are now. He finds a job in a factory, sets up a little home, and makes some friends in the new land. After some times passes, he is finally able to send for his wife and daughter to come live with him. At the end of the story, we see his daughter go out to play, meet a new arrival, and help her find her way in this strange new land. This is a novel that can be enjoyed by people of all ages, one that tells a timeless story of immigrants and new beginnings.

Awards

New South Wales Premier's Literary Award
2006 Cybils Award
Bologna Ragazzi Award, Special Mention
Spectrum Award
Junior Library Guild Selection
World Fantasy Artist of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2007
A New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2007
Amazon.com's Best Teen Book of 2007
2007 Parents' Choice Gold Award
A Book Sense Winter 2007-2008 Top Ten Children’s Pick
A New York Public Library Best Book for Reading and Sharing
A New York Times Notable Children’s Book of 2007
Rocky Mountain News, A Top Ten Book of the Year
The Columbus Dispatch, A Best Book of 2007
Booklist Editors' Choice 2007
A School Library Journal Best Book of 2007
A Washington Post Best Book for Young People for 2007
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon for Fiction
ALA Notable Children's Book, 2008
ALA Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, 2008
ALA Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens, 2008
Horn Book Fanfare Book 2007
Metropolitan Home Magazine's Design 100, 2008
An IRA Notable Book for a Global Society, 2008
2008 Locus Award, Best Art Book
2008 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, special citation for excellence in graphic storytelling
CCBC Choices 2008
Nominated for an International Horror Guild Award, Illustrated Narrative

Reviews

Booklist: “Recipient of numerous awards and nominations in Australia, The Arrival proves a beautiful, compelling piece of art, in both content and form. … Here, he has distilled his themes and aesthetic into a silent, fantastical masterpiece. ... Strong visual metaphors convey personal longing, political suppression, and totalitarian control; imaginative use of panel size and shape powerfully depicts sensations and ideas as diverse as interminable waiting, awe-inspiring majesty, and forlorn memories; delicate alterations in light and color saturate the pages with a sense of time and place. Soft brushstrokes and grand Art Deco–style architecture evoke a time long ago, but the story's immediacy and fantasy elements will appeal even to readers younger than the target audience, though they may miss many of the complexities. Filled with subtlety and grandeur, the book is a unique work that not only fulfills but also expands the potential of its form.”

The New York Times Book Review: "Tan has been walking the fine line between picture books and graphic novels for years now. . . . With ‘The Arrival,’ Tan the graphic novelist has finally arrived. . . . Reading ‘The Arrival’ feels like paging through a family treasure newly discovered up in the attic. However, the sheer beauty of Tan's artwork sometimes gets in the way of his narrative. His panels, like the best photographs, capture the timelessness of particular moments, which can inadvertently endanger the illusion of time passing that a graphic novelist strives to create. ‘The Arrival’ would almost rather be looked at than read. Still, that his biggest flaw is making his pictures too pretty speaks to Tan's skill as a storyteller."

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books: "Tan's fictional newfound land is overwhelmingly glamorous, alien, and plausible, conveying culture shock in a way that straightforward historical chronicles simply can't manage. This could electrify a curriculum, provoke conversation if shared within a family, or simply bring a reader a startling new way of seeing a familiar story."

Connections

Enrichment Activities

Enrichment activities for this book include:

An enrichment activity website for immigration is: http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/unitplan.jsp?id=201]

An enrichment activity website for comics / graphic novels is: http://www.teachingdegree.org/2009/07/05/comics-in-the-classroom-100-tips-tools-and-resources-for-teachers/

Related Readings

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (Scholastic Press, 2007)
American Born Cheese by Gene Luen Yang (Square Fish, 2008)
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch (Amulet Books, 2010)
Gathering Sparks by Howard Schwartz (Roaring Brook Press, 2010)
The Rabbi’s Cat by Joann Sfar (Pantheon, 2007)
Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson (Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2010)
Coraline: The Graphic Novel by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins, 2009)

Other books by Tan:

Lost and Found: Three (Lost and Found Omnibus) by Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2011)
Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2009)
The Red Tree by Shaun Tan (Lothian, 2010)
The Bird King and Other Sketches. by Shaun Tan (Templar, 2011)
The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan (Lothian, 2010)
The Haunted Playground (Shade Books) by Shaun Tan (Stone Arch Books, 2007)
Flinch by Shaun Tan (Gestalt Publishing, 2009)

Image: Google Images

Bibliographic Data

Anderson, Laurie Halse. 2011. Speak. New York: Square Fish. ISBN: 0312674392.

Plot Summary

Freshman Melinda Sordino starts high school as a school outcast because she called the cops during a summer party, and several students were arrested because of it. None of her classmates know the reason why she called the cops is because she was raped at that party. Traumatized to the point that she can barely speak and all alone in high school, she silently narrates her painful story to the reader as she learns to find her voice again.

Critical Analysis

Written for young adults ages 12 and up, this novel tells the story of an isolated teenager in a first person narrative. High school can be trying for any child, but for Melinda it’s even harder because she was raped over the summer and has told no one. Where she once did well in her classwork, she begins failing her classes in high school. Her parents think her behavior is typical teenage rebellion, and never question her personality or academic change. Her friends from middle school, Nicole and Rachel, no longer talk to her. Nicole is into sports, and Rachel hangs out with the exchange students. Melinda befriends the new girl to the school, Heather, so she has someone to be around. Heather is Melinda’s polar opposite – she’s upbeat, driven, and only interested in how she can succeed in high school. As the school year progresses, Heather joins a clique called the Marthas, who do school decorations for events and dress preppie. She dumps Melinda as her friend because Melinda is always depressed and uninterested in anything. Melinda finds an old janitor’s closet by the gym that is never used any more, cleans it up, and hangs out there by herself during her free periods and dead time so she doesn’t have to be around others.

The only class Melinda does well in is art. She seems to have a natural affinity for it, but later finds out her teacher gives A’s to everyone in his class regardless of their work because it’s his own type of statement (which gets him in trouble with the school board). Nicole is in this class with her, and she eventually starts talking to Melinda again in there, praising her work and slowly becoming her friend again over the course of the school year. Art allows Melinda to express herself some, and is the only schoolwork she has any interest in during this whole story. She takes some of her drawings and etchings to her closet to decorate it, and it makes her feel better. As she and Nicole get reacquainted, Rachel starts to date Andy Evans, who is the boy that raped Melinda. Melinda tries to secretly warn Rachel to stay away from him by sending her an anonymous letter in the mail, but Rachel ignores it. Nicole tells Melinda she thinks Andy is a jerk, and Melinda agrees but doesn’t tell her what happened. Melinda and Rachel are in the library at the same time one day, and she attempts to talk to her about Andy, but Rachel won’t listen. She tells Rachel he raped her, yet she won’t believe Melinda. She goes to the prom with Andy, but gets into some kind of argument with him and dumps him there.

Melinda realizes she no longer wants to hide in the janitor’s closet. She’s told someone the truth, and even if she wasn’t believed, she feels like she doesn’t need to hide any more. She goes to the closet after school to retrieve all her artwork, when Andy Evans walks in and locks the door behind himself. He’s angry at Melinda for telling Rachel he raped her, saying they broke up at prom over an argument about it. Then he says he realized she did it because she was jealous and wanted him back, and tries to rape her again. She breaks the mirror over the sink behind her, and uses a shard of glass to defend herself. She makes Andy unlock the door. The noise of their fight attracts the lacrosse team practicing in the gym. Nicole is on the team, and sees what has happened. The next day, the whole school knows Melinda’s story. Rachel apologizes for not believing her. Melinda spends her last day finishing her art project. The story ends with her art teacher asking her “You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?” and she offers to tell him everything.

This story deals with a very difficult topic that unfortunately happens to some young girls in high schools all across America each year. The worst thing anyone can do after experiencing a rape is to remain silent about it, and this story explores how Melinda slowly destroys her life after it happens, then starts to rebuild it as she finds some way to deal with it. No one around her seems to even care about her, and she receives no help for most of the year. Her parents and teachers all assume she’s just being difficult. Her friends abandon her, and she has no support system through most of the book. Yet she endures, and even finds the courage to warn Rachel of the danger she’s in by dating Andy Evans. I wish no person ever had to go through such a nightmare, but I hope this book will encourage girls – or boys - to speak up if something like this ever happens to them. This is a cautionary tale that any child would benefit from reading as soon as they are old enough to deal with this subject matter, and I hope many parents out there encourage their teenagers to read this book.

Awards

2009 Margaret A. Edwards Award
American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults
American Library Association Quick Picks for Young Adults
Michael L. Printz Award - Honor; National Book Awards - Finalist
Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library
Golden Kite Award for Fiction
Booklist Editors' Choice
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Award
Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List
School Library Journal Best Books of the Year
California Young Reader Medal
Kentucky Blue Grass Award
PA Carolyn W. Field Award

Reviews

Booklist: "Anderson perfectly captures the harsh conformity of high-school cliques. . . . Melinda's sarcastic wit, honesty, and courage make her a memorable character whose ultimate triumph will inspire and empower readers."

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books: "Anderson doesn't overburden Melinda with insight or with artistic metaphors, . . . and readers will find it gratifying that not only does she undergo gradual emotional recovery, she also gets to trounce her attacker—and send him, in turn, into silence. The book is also keenly aware of the corrosive details of outsiderhood and the gap between home and daily life at high school; kids whose exclusion may have less concrete cause than Melinda's will nonetheless find the picture recognizable. This is a gripping account of personal wounding and recovery."

School Library Journal: "This powerful novel deals with a difficult yet important topic—rape. . . . Anderson expresses the emotions and the struggles of teenagers perfectly. Melinda's pain is palpable, and readers will totally empathize with her. This is a compelling book, with sharp, crisp writing that draws readers in, engulfing them in the story."

The Horn Book: "An uncannily funny book even as it plumbs the darkness, Speak will hold readers from first word to last."

Connections

Enrichment Activities

Book Reviews by Jamie Morris

Monday, August 8, 2011

Genre 6, Book 3: THE ARRIVAL by Shaun Tan

Genre 6, Book 2: SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson