Flotsam: A Caldecott Award Winner

by David Wiesner

Overview

In this extraordinary Caldecott Medal winner and New York Times bestseller by David Wiesner, a beach day is the springboard to a wildly imaginative exploration of fantastical mysteries of the deep—and of human connections through time.

A young boy comes to the beach eager to collect and examine flotsam—anything floating that has been washed ashore. But nothing among his usual finds compares with the discovery of a barnacle-encrusted underwater camera with its own secrets to share...and to keep.

Meet unexpected underseas denizens and enter fascinating worlds within worlds in this entrancing celebration of imagination, creativity, and the impulse to share that which delights and amazes us.

A beautiful picture book by a master of the form, David Wiesner, who has been awarded the Caldecott Medal three times and the Caldecott Honor twice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780618194575
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/04/2006
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	61,340
Product dimensions:	11.25(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.38(d)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

David Wiesner is internationally renowned for his visual storytelling and has won the Caldecott Medal three times—for Tuesday, The Three Pigs, and Flotsam—the second person in history to do so. He is also the recipient of three Caldecott Honors, for Free Fall, Sector 7, and Mr. Wuffles. He lives near Philadelphia with his family. david-wiesner.harpercollins.com

Hometown:

Outside Philadelphia, P.A.

Date of Birth:

February 5, 1956

Place of Birth:

Bridgewater, NJ

Education:

Rhode Island School of Design -- BFA in Illustration.

Website:

http://www.hmhbooks.com/wiesner/

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Wiesner offers another exceptional, wordless picture book that finds wild magic in quiet, everyday settings." Booklist, ALA, Starred Review

"New details swim into focus with every rereading of this immensely satisfying excursion." Publishers Weekly, Starred

"A mind-bending journey of imagination." School Library Journal, Starred

"In Wiesner's much-honored style, the paintings are cinematic, coolly restrained and deliberate...An invitation not to be resisted." Kirkus Reviews, Starred

"Wiesner's detailed watercolors make the absurd wonderfully believable...and children will surely love 'Flotsam' from start to finish." New York Times Book Review Notable Book

"The meticulous and rich detail of Wiesner's watercolors makes the fantasy involving and convincing." Horn Book

"Wiesner continues to show children that things aren't always what they seem. Would the Caldecott committee consider a three-peat?" Bookpage

"Wiesner returns with his traditional wordless-narrative format for another fantastical outing." Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Editorial Reviews

"Wiesner offers another exceptional, wordless picture book that finds wild magic in quiet, everyday settings."
— Booklist (starred review)

"In Wiesner's much-honored style, the paintings are cinematic, coolly restrained and deliberate...An invitation not to be resisted."

— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Wiesner's detailed watercolors make the absurd wonderfully believable...and children will surely love 'Flotsam' from start to finish."

— New York Times Book Review, Notable Book

"The meticulous and rich detail of Wiesner's watercolors makes the fantasy involving and convincing."
— Horn Book Magazine

"Wiesner continues to show children that things aren't always what they seem. Would the Caldecott committee consider a three-peat?"
— BookPage

"Wiesner returns with his traditional wordless-narrative format for another fantastical outing." — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

From the Publisher

Though wordless, this intriguing book is a storytelling marvel. With stunning, meticulously painted watercolors, award-winning Wiesner tells the fanciful tale of a young boy who discovers an old-fashioned camera washed up on the beach. The developed film reveals fantastical underwater shots, including octopi reading in armchairs and elaborate cities built of seashells. Children will savor the magic of this surreal underwater world and the book's mind-bending conclusion. (Ages 4 to 6)
Child magazine's Best Children's Book Awards 2006

Two-time Caldecott winner Wiesner (Tuesday; The Three Pigs) crafts another wordless mystery, this one set on an ordinary beach and under an enchanted sea. A saucerlike fish's eye stares from the exact center of the dust jacket, and the fish's scarlet skin provides a knockout background color. First-timers might not notice what's reflected in its eye, but return visitors will: it's a boxy camera, drifting underwater with a school of slim green fish. In the opening panels, Wiesner pictures another close-up eye, this one belonging to a blond boy viewing a crab through a magnifying glass. Visual devices binoculars and a microscope in a plastic bag rest on a nearby beach towel, suggesting the boy's optical curiosity. After being tossed by a wave, the studious boy finds a barnacle-covered apparatus on the sand (evocatively labeled the "Melville Underwater Camera"). He removes its roll of film and, when he gets the results, readers see another close-up of his wide-open, astonished eye: the photos depict bizarre undersea scenes (nautilus shells with cutout windows, walking starfish-islands, octopi in their living room la Tuesday's frogs). A lesser fantasist would end the story here, but Wiesner provides a further surprise that connects the curious boy with others like him. Masterfully altering the pace with panel sequences and full-bleed spreads, he fills every inch of the pages with intricate, imaginative watercolor details. New details swim into focus with every rereading of this immensely satisfying excursion. Ages 5-8. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

K-Gr 4-A wave deposits an old-fashioned contraption at the feet of an inquisitive young beachcomber. It's a "Melville underwater camera," and the excited boy quickly develops the film he finds inside. The photos are amazing: a windup fish, with intricate gears and screwed-on panels, appears in a school with its living counterparts; a fully inflated puffer, outfitted as a hot-air balloon, sails above the water; miniature green aliens kowtow to dour-faced sea horses; and more. The last print depicts a girl, holding a photo of a boy, and so on. As the images become smaller, the protagonist views them through his magnifying glass and then his microscope. The chain of children continues back through time, ending with a sepia image of a turn-of-the-20th-century boy waving from a beach. After photographing himself holding the print, the youngster tosses the camera back into the ocean, where it makes its way to its next recipient. This wordless book's vivid watercolor paintings have a crisp realism that anchors the elements of fantasy. Shifting perspectives, from close-ups to landscape views, and a layout incorporating broad spreads and boxed sequences, add drama and motion to the storytelling and echo the photographic theme. Filled with inventive details and delightful twists, each snapshot is a tale waiting to be told. Pair this visual adventure with Wiesner's other works, Chris Van Allsburg's titles, or Barbara Lehman's The Red Book (Houghton, 2004) for a mind-bending journey of imagination.-Joy Fleishhacker, School Library Journal Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

From arguably the most inventive and cerebral visual storyteller in children's literature, comes a wordless invitation to drift with the tide, with the story, with your eyes, with your imagination. A boy at the beach picks up a barnacle-encrusted underwater camera. He develops the film, which produces, first, pictures of a surreal undersea world filled with extraordinary details (i.e., giant starfish bestride the sea carrying mountainous islands on their backs), and then a portrait of a girl holding a picture of a boy holding a picture of another boy . . . and so on . . . and on. Finally, the boy needs a microscope to reveal portraits of children going back in time to a sepia portrait of a turn-of-the-century lad in knickers. The boy adds his own self-portrait to the others, casts the camera back into the waves, and it is carried by a sea creature back to its fantastic depths to be returned as flotsam for another child to find. In Wiesner's much-honored style, the paintings are cinematic, coolly restrained and deliberate, beguiling in their sibylline images and limned with symbolic allusions. An invitation not to be resisted. (Picture book. 6-11)

Kirkus Reviews