Flotsam (book)

Flotsam is a children's 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] Flotsam is the recipient of David Wiesner's 3rd Caldecott Medal. The book contains illustrations of underwater life with no text to accompany them.

Plot

This book has no words, but is told in pictures. A boy is at the beach and finds an old camera. He takes the film to get it developed, and sees photos of fantastical undersea cities and inventions. The last picture is the most interesting, though: it's of a girl, who is holding a photo of a child, who is holding a photo of a child, who is holding a photo of a child, and so on. The boy figures out that he is one in a long line of photographers who have found this camera. He takes a picture of himself holding this photo and tosses the camera back into the ocean; it is carried across the ocean by a variety of fish and sea life, until it again washes ashore and another child finds it.

References

External links

• Website dedicated to "Flotsam"
  • Audio interviews with author