Flotsam: 1

Product Information

I have become a big fan of David Wiesner’s children’s books, probably because one doesn’t need to be a child to enjoy them. They are collectibles and such pleasures to enjoy. There aren’t words, but the wonderful illustrations always tell the stories by themselves.

P.S. If you love this story and want to watch something similar, try out this incredible 8-minute wordless short by Peter Lewis, which has the same amazing but eerie feel as this book: THE CAMERA http://vimeo.com/32655795 The illustrations are breathtaking and vivid. The illustrations are done through many different perspectives, making turn paging that much more exciting. Each image is both realistic and full of fantasy. It allows the reader to use their imagination and creativity to piece together the story.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? Wave by Suzy Lee – a wordless picture book to encourage thoughtful exploration, discussion and the development of visual literacy.

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 is a great example of a wordless picture book that creates engagement through its detailed sequence of images, rather than its text and, as such, requires a high level of inference. The author and illustrator, David Wiesner, is famous for creating other wordless texts, such as Tuesday and Free Fall. Flotsam won the Caldecott Medal in 2007 as well as being recognised by several other awards, and was chosen as the New York Times best illustrated children’s book that year. At heart it is a humorous fantasy story that also looks closely at the cyclical nature of life, as well as the ultimate power of nature. Links and themes:

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

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.

Working in an open space, put large sheets of paper on the floor, each with a picture on it. Children should move around the room, looking at the pictures and generating interesting questions. 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. Text Rationale:

Overview:

Again, use the images (and messages, if there are any) to generate ideas about who these people could have been. Explain that they’re going to create an imaginary undersea creature, using pegs to secure their objects together.