Module 3, part 2 - Flotsam

Bibliography

Wiesner, D. (2006). Flotsam. New York: Clarion Books.

Summary

Through illustrations, the Caldecott Award winning book Flotsam tells a story about a boy who finds an old camera on the beach. He shows his parents then runs into town to have the film developed. The boy is wide-eyed as he looks at the amazing pictures of a mechanical fish, octopi sitting on chairs, sea turtles with shell villages on their backs, a community of aliens, and starfish that have islands growing on their backs. Then he sees the photograph of a girl holding a photograph of a boy holding a photograph of another boy holding a photograph etc. Using a microscope, he magnifies the picture until he can see the boy standing in the very first photograph. He takes a picture of himself holding the photograph then throws the camera back out into the ocean. The camera gets pulled and dragged by squids, a whale, seahorses, seagulls, and dolphins until it ends up getting washed ashore in front of a little girl.

My Thoughts

This book is amazing. I find it fascinating that this book can tell such a detailed story without using any words. I really liked the originality of the story and Wiesner’s imagination in creating the various underwater scenes. This is a book with which I could sit for hours just looking at the beautifully creative illustrations and not realize how much time was passing. (I know because I did!)

Reviews

“With its careful array of beachcombed items, the title page spread of Wiesner’s latest picture book makes it look like one of those Eyewitness books, but the following wordless story is far stranger than fact. In clue-and fancy-strewn full-page paintings and panels, a boy at the beach closely examines items and animals washed in from the sea; when a wave deposits an old camera on the shore, his viewing takes a radical shift. He gets the camera’s film developed at a nearby shop, allowing Wiesner’s bountiful imagination great play in the series of photos the boy then examines: a robot fish, an octopus reading aloud to its offspring, giant starfish with islands on their backs. And: a seaside photo of a girl holding a seaside photo of a boy, holding a seaside photo of another child, ad infinitum. The inquisitive boy’s ready magnifying glass and microscope allow him to see further and further into the photo, and further back in time, as revealed by the increasingly old-fashioned clothes worn by the children pictured. What to do but add himself to the sequence? The meticulous and rich detail of Wiesner’s watercolors makes the fantasy involving and convincing; children who enjoyed scoping out Banyai’s Zoom books and Lehman’s The Red Book will keep a keen eye on this book about a picture of a picture of a picture of a. . . .”

Sutton, R. (2006). [Review of the book Flotsam, by D. Wiesner]. Horn Book Magazine, 82 (5), 571-572.

Ideas for Use

Although a display is not an original or a creative idea, having this book on display would catch people’s attention, especially if it were open to one of the many imaginative underwater illustration pages.