Module 3: Caldecott Winners

Flotsam by David Wiesner

 Caldecott Winner 2007

Summary: Flotsam is a wordless picture book that tells the story of a boy at the beach who likes to investigate things he finds there.  The reader knows this because of all the tools the boy has with him including a shovel, bucket, hand lens, and microscope. He finds an old camera that has washed ashore and still has film in it.  He takes the film to be processed and is amazed to see the unusual undersea pictures that were developed.  There is also a picture of a child holding a picture of another child.  He uses his hand lens and the increasing magnification of the microscope to find the surprises within surprises inside the picture. Then he continues the story by taking a picture of himself and throwing the camera out to sea.
My Impression: The illustrations in this book are fanciful and fantastic.  The undersea pictures tell a story within the story, as does the picture of the child, with pictures of other children hidden inside. I liked the way the child used the tools he had to first investigate the animal life around him, then to solve the mystery of the child's photo.  The illustrations allow children to get lost in the story and start telling it to those around them.  There are gasps of excitement as they discover something new as they look more closely at the pictures.

Review:

Author: Gillian Engberg

Wiesner, David (author).Sept. 2006. 40p. illus. Clarion, hardcover. PreS-Grade 2.

REVIEW. First published August, 2006 (Booklist)

 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.

— Gillian Engberg 
Library Use: This book could be used in a collaborative effort with teachers to introduce the use of a hand lens or for older students a microscope. This could be done in two different ways. One way is  in an inquiry fashion- by setting out the tools and items to investigate, so students discover how the tools work. Another way is the more traditional lesson where instruction in the proper use of the tools is given, then items are set out and students use the tools as directed to look at the items. It would also be interesting to try the photo-within-a-photo using a digital camera and printing out the picture for the next child to hold.

Reference List:

Engberg, G. (2006, August). Review of the book Flotsam, by David Weisner. Booklist. Retrieved from Literary Resource Center.

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