Flotsam (Caldecott Medal Book): A Caldecott Award Winner

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Borrow some old-fashioned cameras and ask children to explore them. Weigh and measure the cameras, as if they are scientific specimens and make notes about the materials used. Describe what can be seen, felt and heard. Draw the cameras from different angles, as accurately as possible. Its playful sophistication conveys a complexity of ideas that linger in the mind long after the book has been closed, encouraging discussion and inspiring all kinds of responses. 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. 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.

Flotsam is a children's wordless picture book written and illustrated by David Wiesner. Published by Clarion/Houghton Mifflin in 2006, it was the 2007 winner of the Caldecott Medal; [1] the third win for David Wiesner. The book contains illustrations of underwater life with no text to accompany them. David Small (November 12, 2006). "Fish in Focus". The New York Times . Retrieved 2011-06-16. Review of Flotsam (Clarion Books, 2007). On each occasion, ensure the child is holding the previous photograph, as the boy does in the book, to create a series of pictures recording the timeline of children involved in the project.

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Wiesner's first book was Honest Andrew, a picture book with text by Gloria Skurzynski, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1980. That year he also illustrated a novel by Avi, Man From the Sky (Knopf, 1980). After illustrating a dozen or more books with other writers, he and his wife Kim Kahng co-wrote Loathsome Dragon, a picture book with his illustrations that G.P. Putnam's published in 1987. Since then Wiesner has created many picture books solo—as writer and illustrator, or stories without words. Free Fall (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1988) was a Caldecott Honor Book, a runner-up for the annual Caldecott Medal, conferred by the American Library Association on the illustrator of the year's best-illustrated picture book. [1] 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. Beautiful child’s graphic novel... Wiesner keeps his viewpoint strictly childlike, magnifying the mundane until you see his world in a grain of sand. Evening Standard E.T., the Storybook of the Green Planet by William Kotzwinkle; based on the film story by Steven Spielberg and Melissa Mathison

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. IBBY Announces Winners of 2008 Hans Christian Andersen Awards". International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). Press release 31 March 2008. You’ll need several copies of the book, so that children can follow the illustrations in small groups.

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?

Take the initial sequence of images where the boy is swamped by the wave and finds the camera, and the sequence at the end, where the boy is again splashed by the wave (which reclaims his pictures). Talk about the images with your class. How would it feel to be experiencing these events?David Wiesner’s wordless, imaginative and exuberantly detailed picture book, Flotsam (Clarion Books, 2006), is a joy to share with children at KS2. 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. The Unforgotten Coat by Frank Cottrell Boyce – This book about a girl’s friendship with a Mongolian refugee is illustrated with photographs that make the everyday world seem exotic.