Flotsam
A Caldecott Award Winner
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A highly acclaimed, wordless Caldecott Award-winning picture book from the only living three-time winner of the Caldecott Medal: David Wiesner.
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.
'Beautiful child’s graphic novel... Wiesner keeps his viewpoint strictly childlike, magnifying the mundane until you see his world in a grain of sand.' EVENING STANDARD
'Beautiful' TELEGRAPH
'Wonderfully imaginative . . . The pictures are packed with details and each re-reading provides more joy' BOOKSELLER
'From arguably the most inventive and cerebral visual storyteller in children's literature comes a wordless invitation . . . not to be resisted' KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
