Flotsam (Caldecott Medal Book): A Caldecott Award Winner

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Explain that they’re going to create an imaginary undersea creature, using pegs to secure their objects together. The underwater camera has a film inside. Can you find out how these cameras work? How are they different from digital cameras? Make a collection of old photographic portraits – the sort available cheaply in postcard form from antique markets work well. This can build into an exercise where half the class are ‘taunters’ on the beach, and half work together as the waves, ‘replying’ to them.

Pair them, asking them to mirror each other’s movements, then progress to a ‘conversation’, where one child makes a movement answered by a different movement from their partner. Article for the Horn Book, David Wiesner. Accessed September 4, 2019. "A guy walked into my tenth-grade art class at Bridgewater-Raritan high school New Jersey, and changed my life. Sounds like the setup for a classic punch line, but this was no joke. The guy had graduated from my school two years earlier and was now a student at some place called the Rhode Island School of Design. He said it was an art school." Extend this into a dramatic scenario where a child taunts the waves. Ask your class to explore this via body movements.

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Are the photos what the children expected? Can they identify the places pictured? What might people see in the usual, the everyday, if they stopped and looked more closely? Wiesner has always been intrigued by and curious about what comes before and after the captured image. His books somehow convey the sequence of thoughts leading up to and following each picture, and that quality explain why they are frequently described as cinematic. This book is another winner, all about a child on a beach day with his parents. Other children may scream and run into the waves, but this boy has his microscope with him as he inspects the various forms of life in sand and water. Then he finds a curious looking camera, old but strange. Inside is a roll of film, so he runs to the one-hour photo place down the street and has it developed. When he eagerly gets the finished prints, he is astonished at what he finds. The camera has captured life under the waves as never seen before. Flotsam" by David Wiesner is a wordless picture book. The story takes place at the shore. It is mostly told through the perspective of the camera after a young boy finds the vintage camera on the beach. He develops the film and it tells an adventurous and imaginative story of all the places the camera has been.

E.T., the Storybook of the Green Planet by William Kotzwinkle; based on the film story by Steven Spielberg and Melissa Mathison The story begins with a curious boy who is visiting the beach. He has an interest in beach life and brings a multitude of exploration tools with him. As he’s exploring, a wave comes, and brings with it a strange looking camera. It resembles an underwater camera. He takes out the film and decides to have the film developed at the one hour photo department. The pictures he gets from the camera are amazing and show pictures of underwater sea life, including some strange mechanical fish. Within the photos he notices something strange and uses his microscope to figure it out. What he sees is surprising. Follow along in the story to see what he decides to do with it. The activity was beautifully simple and inclusive for all the children. I was blown away with the ideas and the reasoning they had behind them. I will be definitely using these grids for other activities again in the future. In David Wiesner’s Flotsam, a boy finds a camera on a beach, which contains images of a fantastical underwater world of invented creatures. This wordless picturebook explores natural sciences from specimens to things like floating and sinking; biodegradability and ocean currents. There are also numerous opportunities for writing, drama, music, art and dance… What are these creatures called? What are their habitats and life cycles? Ask children to draw and write about them, creating entries for an encyclopedia about newly discovered underwater life.

Create your own incredible pictures that show images that might have been taken by the underwater camera. David Wiesner’s illustrations are once again beautiful as he draws each character in a realistic way, especially of the images of the fishes doing human activities under the sea. The image that probably stood out the most was the image of the family of squids sitting around in their living room as the living room is set up like an underwater version of a living room as there are fish lamps all over the room. David Wiesner’s illustrations take control of telling this story, as there are no words to tell the story, just the images. David Wiesner’s story of a young boy discovering an underwater world is interesting and creative at the same time as the reader gets to see the human world from a fish’s perspective, as seashells take over as houses and turtles are used as transportations. 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.

This book is very thought-provoking. The illustrations are beautiful and the story is easy to follow. This is one of my favorites this year. In time, the young Wiesner began exploring the history of art, delving into the Renaissance at first — Michelangelo, Dürer, and da Vinci — then moving on to such surrealists as Magritte, de Chirico, and Dalí. As he got older, he would sit, inspired by these masters, at the oak drafting table his father had found for him and would construct new worlds on paper and create wordless comic books, such as Slop the Wonder Pig, and silent movies, like his kung fu vampire film The Saga of Butchula. I would recommend this book for just about any age group. The purpose for using it will vary, but it fosters our creative side, whether you are 5 or 15. Older students could use it for a writing activity in which they have to create words to go with each image. Wiesner was born and raised in Bridgewater Township, New Jersey, and attended Bridgewater-Raritan High School. He graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration. [3] Wiesner currently resides outside of Philadelphia with his family.The camera concept feels very familiar to me. I'm sure I've seen this but with a camera phone. The discoverer took pictures of themselves and then left the phone to be discovered by someone else. The phone travelled all over the world. I just can't remember where I saw this, whether it was a news item or part of a TV show. The boy uses a magnifying glass to look at seaside creatures. Could you use one to look closely at different objects? Can you explain how a magnifying glass works? The illustrations are drawn in the horizontal format - they are wider than they are tall - and in beautiful watercolors. The story is delightful and universal, full of wonderful detail and whimsical invention: how many of us have often dreamed of finding something which would be special and unique just by chance, to feel the joy of discovery? The juxtaposition of imagination and reality is truly delightful, and so is the uplifting mood of the book and it's message -the perserverance of wonder in an never ending chain. This is a three-week Writing Root for Flotsam by David Wiesner in which children dicsover a range of ‘Flotsam’ items (either after a visit to the seaside, or that have appeared in the classroom). One item is a camera that contains mysterious photographs that the children must investigate. These photos come from the book Flotsam by David Wiesner. Children go on to read and reflect on the book, making predictions and retelling orally and in writing. Later in the sequence of learning, the children have the opportunity to create their own sequel to the story, called Jetsam, where they write the story of the child who next finds the camera. As an optional additional study, this could also link to a study of the history of cameras and report writing about this and could include a historical link about the way cameras have changed the way history is recorded. Synopsis of Text: