Souvenirs from All Over the Globe

THE ARRIVALBy Shaun Tan Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic $19.99 (ages 12-up)

Don't mistake this astonishing work by Australia's Shaun Tan for a picture book, even though it consists of nothing but pictures. At 128 pages, it's what could be called a pictorial novel, since the usual label -- graphic novel -- suggests more of a manga- or comic-style book, bristling with text. The Arrival, which depicts a man driven by the dragon shadow of totalitarianism to leave his family and immigrate to a fantastically strange, far-off country, contains not a word of dialogue -- and the words that do appear, in letters, maps, books or signs, are invented, as if to mirror the experience of immigrants reduced to the status of illiterate deaf mutes by a new language. Hundreds of sepia-toned drawings, some tiny, some panoramic, all pulsing with detail, combine to produce an effect reminiscent of silent movies or mime, the absence of words forcing the eye and the brain to work harder. The Arrival is neck-and-neck with Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret for most original children's book of 2007, but unlike that uneven effort, it's definitely not just for the young.

SPUDBy John van de Ruit Razorbill. $16.99 (ages 14-up)

It's 1990 in Durban, South Africa. Nelson Mandela is just out of prison, but apartheid is hanging on like grim death. Spud is 13, white and off for his first year at a posh boarding school, all red brick and ivy, housemasters and cricket. Oh, and he's a choirboy. If you're having trouble with this scenario, just read Spud's fictional diary, which shows acute understanding not only of the teenager's burgeoning powers of observation ("Robert Black has the hugest willy"; "Charles Dickens is a boring old fart") and cherished dreams (a girl who looks like Julia Roberts, the acting chops of Robert De Niro) but also of his stirring conscience, in passages that evoke an unlamented era ("Tonight's African Affairs meeting focused on the anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. . . . The police said he had slipped and fallen out of the prison window -- but how dumb do they think we really are?")

CARPE DIEMBy Autumn Cornwell Feiwel and Friends. $16.95 (ages 12-up)

This is self-confessed travel junkie Autumn Cornwell's first novel -- and she's hit one out of the park. Her heroine is 16-year-old Vassar Spore, daughter of overachievers and the author of a complete list of Life Goals, beginning with acceptance by the elite college she was named for. But Vassar's plans for a super-productive summer at home in Seattle are scuttled when a package arrives ("For me? I wasn't expecting anything. I'd already received my Jumbo Wall Calendar for the next school year."). It's a birthday gift from Vassar's nomadic grandma, currently in Southeast Asia: a round-trip ticket to Singapore and the offer of an "all-expenses-paid summer vacation backpacking through Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos." Vassar goes, with 10 pieces of luggage and a laptop for her novel/memoir, and enlightenment predictably ensues. ("Live in the moment" is just the beginning.) But so does hilarity, as Cornwell genially skewers both Ivy League-obsessed nerds and the Lonely Planet crowd.

RED BUTTERFLY How a Princess Smuggled the Secret of Silk Out of ChinaBy Deborah Noyes Illustrated by Sophie Blackall Candlewick. $16.99 (ages 4-8)

More than 1,500 years ago, Deborah Noyes writes in a note appended to this beautiful picture book, a Chinese princess married the king of a desert oasis far to the west and took with her, hidden in her hair or headdress, silkworm cocoons and mulberry seeds. Or so goes the legend. In language recalling the poet Li Po, best known to readers of English through Ezra Pound's rendering of "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter," Noyes tries to imagine what might have driven a heartsick young princess to give up China's precious secret. "I am a child with my hair yet cut across my forehead, but soon I will marry the king of far Khotan. . . . The night court hums with poets. Scroll painters stretch white silk. . . . I would give every silver hairpin, every jade carving and gold ornament for one brush of southern mist, one windy, silken promise -- that home be with me always." Sophie Blackall did the pictures, light and bright as butterflies, in Chinese ink and watercolors.

Elizabeth Ward can be reached at warde@washpost.com.