Module 3b – Flotsam by David Wiesner

1. Citation - Wiesner, David. Flotsam. Sept. 2006. 40p. illus. Clarion, (0-618-19457-6).
   
2. Summary - A camera washes up on shore, where a young boy finds it. He prints the film that was in it, and finds fantastical underwater scenes. In addition to the scenes, he finds a picture of a person holding a picture. He uses a microscope to magnify, and finds that there is a pattern. The more he magnifies, he can see the history of the camera, as each person has taken a picture of themselves holding the last picture in the previous camera. The boy takes the camera and takes a picture of himself (holding the picture within a picture x8) and throws the camera back into the ocean, where after another fantastical journey, it winds up in the hands of another child.
   
3. Impressions of the Book- One of the most exciting parts about this book is that the illustration is spectacular. Bright colors and vivid pictures of imaginative scenes from underwater make this book an interesting read. Even though there is no text, the story is very interesting both as a reader and on a conceptual level. Anyone who has ever looked in to a mirror-on-mirror image of themselves understands the idea of something being infinite. The idea of "picture in a picture" is not only creative, but tells a much greater tale. This book sparks the imagination and tickles the eye as you flip the pages and let your imagination take over.
   
4. Reviews - Engberg, G. (2006). Flotsam. Booklist, 102(22), 76. Retrieved from MAS Ultra - School Edition database.
   

   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
   

5. Use in a library setting – This book could be used for a writing assignment, as a supplement to a science lesson or even as a "readers theater" type of production - allowing students to make up their own narrative as they read the story to a group.