Module 3: Flotsam

Book Cover:

Book Summary:  Wiesner’s unique Caldecott Winner, Flotsam, is a wordless story of a boy who finds a treasure on the beach…a camera.  The journey of the camera is recorded through Wiesner’s incredible illustrations.  The boy explores the camera’s travels through the photographs.

APA Reference: 

Wiesner, D. (2006). Flotsam. New York, NY:  Houghton Mifflin Co.

Impressions:  I was really impressed with David Wiesner’s ability to completely tell a story without words.  His watercolor illustrations are so descriptive that words are not even needed.  His attention to detail on each page tell a magnificent story.  It’s a very original story, too, which actually inspires curiosity.

Professional Review:

Gillian Engberg writes, “As in his Caldecott Medal Book Tuesday (1991), Wiesner offers another exceptional, wordless picture book that finds wild magic in quiet, everyday settings. At the seaside, a boy holds a magnifying glass up to a flailing hermit crab; binoculars and a microscope lay nearby. The array of lenses signals the shifting viewpoints to come, and in the following panels, the boy discovers an old-fashioned camera, film intact. A trip to the photo store produces astonishing pictures: an octopus in an armchair holding story hour in a deep-sea parlor; tiny, green alien tourists peering at sea horses. There are portraits of children around the world and through the ages, each child holding another child’s photo. After snapping his own image, the boy returns the camera to the sea, where it’s carried on a journey to another child. Children may initially puzzle, along with the boy, over the mechanics of the camera and the connections between the photographed portraits. When closely observed, however, the masterful watercolors and ingeniously layered perspectives create a clear narrative, and viewers will eagerly fill in the story’s wordless spaces with their own imagined story lines. Like Chris Van Allsburg’s books and Wiesner’s previous works, this visual wonder invites us to rethink how and what we see, out in the world and in our mind’s eye.”

Engberg, G. (2006, August). Flotsam, by David Wiesner. Retrieved from                                      http://www.booklistonline.com/Flotsam-David-Wiesner/pid=1709229

Library Use:  In the library you could have a Flotsam bulletin board where students could bring in pictures of their own journeys (from daily life or their travels) and post them.