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Flotsam (Caldecott Medal Book) (Hardcover) (Hardcover)
by David Wiesner
| Category:
Children's book, Award-winning, Ocean |
| Market price: ¥ 178.00
MSL price:
¥ 168.00
[ Shop incentives ]
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Anyone with a love for the ocean will be mesmerized by this beautiful book. |
| If you want us to help you with the right titles you're looking for, or to make reading recommendations based on your needs, please contact our consultants. |
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Author: David Wiesner
Publisher: Clarion Books
Pub. in: September, 2006
ISBN: 0618194576
Pages: 40
Measurements: 11.2 x 9.1 x 0.6 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BC00422
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0618194575
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- Awards & Credential -
The winner of the 2007 Caldecott award. |
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- MSL Picks -
Flotsam is a wordless picture book, with detailed illustrations that reward close examination. A young boy is at the beach with his parents, with no other kids to play with. He entertains himself by examining crabs with his magnifying glass. Venturing too close to the water, he's toppled by a large wave. In its wake, the wave leaves a boxy, old-fashioned, underwater camera. As any right-minded child would do, he takes the film from the camera to a one-hour photo store, and also replaces it with a new roll of film. Returning to the beach, he examines the photos, and finds documentation of a fantastic underwater world filled with surprises.
The illustrations of the underwater world are different in tone from the illustrations of the boy on the beach. The beachside pages have an old-fashioned look about them, and are fairly sparse. They are frequently framed as a series of smaller pictures set on the same larger page. The scene where the boy is waiting for the one-hour photo captures perfectly his impatience, through a series of small images.
The underwater photos are more colorful, more whimsical, and very detailed. The boy finds photos of mechanical fish, octopuses who sit in armchairs and read to their children, tiny underwater aliens wearing bubble helmets, gigantic starfish with islands on their backs, and giant turtles bearing shell cities. Some of the details will make the reader laugh aloud, like the underwater fishbowl, with fish casually swimming in and out, the blowfish as open-air balloon, the electric eels working as light bulbs, and the spotted fish wearing a collar around its non-neck, with the name-tag Spot.
The last picture that the boy finds is of a girl, who is holding a picture of a boy, who in turn is holding a picture of a girl, and so on. Turning to his trusty microscope, the boy finds that this nesting of photos continues through several levels. Going back far enough, the pictures start to be in black and white, then in sepia, the clothing old fashioned. It's a perfect chain of all of the people who have found the camera.
Realizing what he has to do, the boy takes his own picture, while holding the photo of the girl holding a photo. Then he tosses the camera back into the ocean, where it embarks on another journey, this time with the reader traveling along. In the end, we see the camera swept up onto another beach, where a lonely girl is waiting.
It's amazing what David Wiesner is able to accomplish in this book without any words at all. We see the boy's curiosity and wonder. We follow all of his movements as he finds the camera, shows it to his parents, and checks with the lifeguard to make sure no one has reported it missing. We see vignettes of a hidden underwater world, one that any child would like to imagine really exists. And we see the camera transported by a series of sea creatures, to end up in the lap of another child.
(MSL quote from Jennifer Robinson )
Target readers:
Kids aged 4-8
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David Wiesner's interest in visual storytelling dates back to high school days when he made silent movies and drew wordless comic books. Born and raised in Bridgewater, New Jersey, he graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration. While a student, he created a painting nine feet long, which he now recognizes as the genesis of Free Fall, his first book of his own authorship, for which he was awarded a Caldecott Honor Medal in 1989. Tuesday was the 1992 Caldecott Medal Winner, and in 2002 David won his second Caldecott Medal for The Three Pigs. Mr. Wiesner and his wife, Kim Kahang, and their two children live in Philadelphia, where he devotes full time to illustration and she pursues her career as a surgeon.
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A bright, science minded boy goes to the beach equipped to collect and examine flotsam-anything floating that has been washed ashore. Bottles, lost toys, small objects of every description are among his usual finds. But there's no way he could have prepared for one particular discovery: a barnacle-encrusted underwater camera, with its own secrets to share... and to keep.
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| View all 8 comments |
J. shavlik (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-25 00:00>
This book is got more more more, It has vintage 50's beach days, it has the love of photography, the love of mystery, techy surprises, marine life and an afternoon of imagination. This instantly goes into my all time favorites circle. the timelessness of the last page is a powerful political statement with such sweet beauty. |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-25 00:00>
I am an avid reader of children's bks, which started w/reading w/& for my now 8yr old daughter. Still, I was not familiar w/David Wiesner when I ran across Flotsam on Amazon recently. Based on the descriptions provided, I ordered it. I have just read it for the 1st time. I was totally drawn in by the fabulous illustrations (both technique & creativity/imagination), layout style, & wordless story. Since I had read about it before actually reading it, I am not sure, but, I doubt I would have completely understood what happened as far as the other children & photos from other places & the past. Either way, it is captivating. I will be looking for the rest of this author's body of work.
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Greg Budig (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-25 00:00>
I wonder if this is all getting a little too easy for Mr. Wiesner, I mean he has released seven books since 1990, three of which have won the prestigious Caldecott Medal and two which were Caldecott Honor books. Kind of makes you wonder..."What was wrong with the other two?" The fact is that Mr. David Wiesner is an illustrative genius. His latest offering and 2006 Caldecott Medal winner is called "Flotsam". His use of watercolor, is as always, very clean and meticulous, but his innovative designs and story layouts have set him apart in his own universe. "Flotsam" proves this point once again! This book is a feast for anyone with an imaginative eye, one cannot simply look at his illustrations but must stare at them in wonder, this book is indeed a treasure!
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Jesse Kornbluth (MSL quote), USA
<2007-06-25 00:00>
The little one is presently holding steady at age "four-and-a-half-and-three-quarters-but-in-my-head-I'm-seven." And boy, is she ready to read.
We're delighted. And we want to encourage her. (Which does not extend to teaching her how to read; we are old, our reservoir of patience is not what it once was, it's better to let the experts at her high-priced school do the job.) So we get her the picture books of David Wiesner and ask her to tell us their stories.
Wiesner is the acknowledged master of wordless books for kids. (All three of the Wiesner books we own - Tuesday, Three Pigs and Flotsam, his most recent book - have won the Caldecott Medal.) It's not just that he draws beautifully and that his pictures allow a child aged 4 through 7 to tell the story. His greater gift is his refusal to talk down. His books are challenging. They are invitations to consider the story later, to broaden a child's sense of the world - or, more accurately, they reflect the ability of most children to dream big and think poetically.
"Flotsam," for example, takes us to the beach. A well-equipped boy - he's got a magnifying glass, binoculars and a microscope - is digging and exploring while his parents read. He's so fascinated by a crab he doesn't see a rogue wave rolling in; when it rolls out, there's an ancient box camera at his feet. He shows it to friends, who are predictably puzzled. (Film inside? What, no digital chip?) And he takes the film to be developed at a one-hour photo shop.
Back at the beach, the boy looks at the pictures. One is of fish - but some of the fish have gears. In another, sea creatures sit on lounge chairs in an underwater living room. A puffer becomes a hot air balloon. A village of shells travels on the back of a turtle. Aliens have a party on an underwater terrace. Giant starfish walk in the shallows.
And then there is the picture of a Japanese girl. She's holding a picture of another kid, who's holding a picture of another kid, who's holding....The magnifying glass isn't powerful enough; this is a job for the microscope.
And now, as we look deeper into the pictures, we are moving back into time. The decades fly by - we end in the late 19th century, looking at a boy on the beach. Which gives our inquisitive lad an idea: He'll take a self-portrait using this old camera.
As soon as he snaps the shutter, he's hit by another wave. The photos scatter. The boy thinks for a moment, then throws the camera into the water. We see it float in the moonlight. Get pulled by a squid. Become a carriage for sea horses. Fly in the bill of a pelican. Float on an iceberg. And, at last, wash up on a beach.
A little girl, sitting on the beach, sees the camera. She reaches for it....
That's only half the story. The lesser half, really. The much larger part begins with your kid saying, "I want to read that book." And then, in her little voice, she tells you a story.
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