Review of Flotsam by David Wiesner

• Bibliography

Wiesner, David. 2006. FLOTSAM. Ill. by David Wiesner. New york, NY: Clarion Books. ISBN 139780618194575

• Plot Summary

In this highly imaginative wordless picture book, a little boy finds an underwater camera while at the beach. He has the film developed and finds that life under the sea is very interesting. He also discovers that he is certainly not the first to find the camera nor the first to use and return the camera to the ocean to be found again. This camera has been around for a while.

• Critical Analysis

This wordless picture book is another thought provoking offering from Wiesner. Executed entirely in watercolor, the book has stunning detail and color. The imaginative use of the creatures under the sea and the lives they lead when "nobody is looking" is humorous and leaves the reader excited with the thrill of discovery. The images of the photograph that shows one child after another taking a photograph, holding the previously taken photograph in his or her hand draws the reader in like the little boy in the book. When he uses the microscope to see all the images back to the very first photograph, the visual history is so very amusing. The last page of the book has the camera being found again, after another fascinating journey through the ocean.

• Review Excerpts

Review in HORN BOOK-"With its careful array of beach combed items, the title page spread of Wiesner's latest wordless picture book makes it look like one of those Eyewitness books, but the following wordless story is far stranger than fact."

Review in SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL-"Filled with inventive details and delightful twists, each shot is a tale waiting to be told."

Review in KIRKUS REVIEWS-'In Wiesner's much-honored style, the paintings are cinematic, coolly retrained and deliberate, beguiling in their sibylline images and limned with symbolic allusions. An invitation not to be resisted."

• Connections

1. Look at books about ocean life and compare the informational text to Wiesner's imagination about what really happens when the camera is taken on a journey.
2. Gather books on fashion of the twentieth century and allow children the time to decide what year each photograph in the camera must have been made.
3. Have children make up thier own painting or drawing of an environment adding thier own make-believe elements.