TOP TEN Flotsam by David Wiesner. New York: Clarion Books, 2006. ISBN: 9780618194575

  Annotation: A wordless story; discovering a camera at the seashore, a boy examines fantastic photos, takes a picture of himself and returns the camera to the sea to continue its journey

  Media: watercolour

  Rating: 5Q/5P

lss  August/2009

Flotsam, by David Wiesner. New York: Clarion, 2006.

TOP TEN

ISBN: 978-0618194575

Annotation: In this wordless story, a young beachcomber finds an underwater camera that contains a series of fantastic photographs documenting the camera’s journey.

Illustrations: Executed in watercolor. Weisner uses a rich, saturated color palette with many blues and greens for the undersea scenes and a contrastingly light, airy palette that emphasizes the brilliant sunlight of the seashore for the beach scenes. The deep colors of the underwater scenes effectively create a feeling of the weight of the ocean above, and help build an eerie sense of otherworldliness. Weisner’s illustrations are done in a realistic style which works well to help the reader suspend their disbelief and be absorbed in the story’s fantasy-meets-real-world setting. Weisner also makes use of different page-layouts to give dramatic pacing to the wordless story, employing double-page spreads for emphasis on certain scenes and comic book style panels on other pages for a sense of motion and timing.

Use of Personification: Wiesner’s witty illustrations offer many examples of personification of undersea life; one example is the scene depicting a group of octopi seated in armchairs reading books.

5Q/4P

DM 6/28/09