Flotsam by David Wiesner

Elementary age and up

David Wiesner is rapidly becoming one of my all-time favorite illustrators. I loved the simultaneous nostalgia and irreverence for a classic tale in his The Three Pigs, which won the Caldecott Medal, and a similar sense of pure imagination comes through in Flotsam, yet another medalist for this amazing storyteller. This book calls for a connection to the past, as well as a connection to the future, as it chronicles the wonders recorded by a camera that has come through the decades to a boy combing the beach for childhood treasures. The illustrations make us wonder what goes on in the places we can’t see – whole cities of seashells thrive on the backs of sea turtles, mermaid metropolises exist alongside alien hideaways, and gargantuan starfish move mountains. As wonderful as these images are, my favorite illustrations come when the boy looks closer at the self-portraits of the children who have found the camera before him – his microscope lets him see back to the first child to send the camera into the ocean at the turn of the twentieth century. Something akin to an “aha” moment occurs as we realize that each of the children who have seen the contents of the camera have seen yet another set of amazing pictures and wanted to share this opportunity with posterity – a profound indication that the wonder of the world goes on and on and on.

The magic realism in Wiesner’s books reminds me of Rob Gonsalves’s work in Imagine a Night and Imagine a Day, which in turn reminds me of M.C. Escher’s impossible constructions. I’m not sure what draws me to the seamless blending of dream and reality that these artists conceive, but I know that I intend not only to have all of Wiesner’s work in my school library – at whatever level I teach – but I’ve also put him on my short list of authors and illustrators whose work I will buy for my home collection. His work is a celebration of imagination, a concept I will always embrace.