Susie Wilde (Children's Literature)
Flotsam is more layered than Weisner’s other books. It begins with a first page almost filled with an illustration of a shocked-looking crab. This is a good initial image for a book full of visual surprises. A giant eye looms in the background, and a page turn reveals that it is no underwater predator but a boy examining the crab under a magnifying glass. This boy has come to the beach equipped with shovels, buckets, a microscope, and a curious mind. Soon he discovers an old underwater camera washed up on the beach. The boy develops the film and the photos reveal a fantastical undersea world. Weisner’s vibrant pictures lead us to ocean depths where we see oddities, like a blue octopus reading aloud in a cozy underwater living room. More pictures become a portal to the past when the curious boy views children from other eras holding pictures of children from even longer ago; generations have held this magical camera! The ending is predictable, but it is a journey of contrasts well worth taking as Weisner gives us a realistic view of fantasy worlds and blurs our picture of reality. His perspectives vary and so do his layouts--illustrations might fill two pages or be divided into several sequences of smaller illustrations. Muted beach colors stand out against the brilliant underwater fish. Each picture contributes to the whole story and many hold potential for wondering together. 2006, Clarion, $17.00. Ages 4 to 8.

Megan Elinski (Children's Literature)
This wordless picture book depicts a family spending a day on a sunny, sandy beach. As the curious young male protagonist plays with a crab, rushing waters take him away. After being washed up on shore, he finds himself with an antique camera. He takes the film left in the camera to be developed at the photo shop and is astounded at what he sees in the photos. The roll begins with interesting photos of life undersea and the animals in the water. Then, pictures appear of past children who have previously encountered the camera on the beach. After going through multiple similar photos, the boy then takes a photo of himself and throws the camera back into the ocean. The story ends with a new young child finding the camera washed up on the shore. As in Tuesday and Free Fall, Wiesner does a wonderful job of using only illustrations to create this story. And as in his past books, this one too uses a realistic environment but evokes unrealistic situations with its large and lifelike scenes, such as this book’s fantastic world of underwater life. The wordless format gives readers the freedom to imagine and create their own version of the story. This book could be a great asset to a classroom in that students could write text for this book to practice their creative writing skills. 2006, Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Company, $17.00. Ages 5 to 8.

Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz (Children's Literature)
A budding young scientist has brought his magnifying glass, binoculars, and microscope to the beach. As his parents relax, he begins to explore even before the title page. On the double-spread title page is an exhibition of some of the flotsam to be found. Then the wordless story of his investigations begins. We are sucked in immediately by Wiesner’s photorealistic images and the fashion in which they are presented. Double-page scenes show us the sweep of the ocean beach. A waterproof camera washes up in front of him, and in several varying sized rectangular scenes we see his vain attempts to discover the owner. A trip to the photo shop with the roll of film produces for him scenes of magical underwater life. There is also a photo of a young girl holding a packet of photos of other youngsters. Puzzling over this leads to examination under the magnifying glass and eventually the microscope. There he moves to further and further magnification of the pictures inside the pictures each child is holding, as the magnification rises to 70x and the scenes go back in time. Our hero thinks, then takes his own picture with the camera holding the other photos, and returns the camera to the undersea world. Finally it is washed ashore where a young girl reaches toward it, and the tale can go on. Mystery and humor combine in the watercolors that fascinate and stimulate further imagination. Note the different jacket and cover. 2006, Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Company, $17.00. Ages 5 to 9.

CCBC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices, 2007)
When an old, underwater camera washes up on a beach, the scientifically-minded boy who finds it discovers there is film inside. When he has the pictures developed, they reveal an extraordinarily unscientific perspective on life beneath the sea: a robotic fish, the cozy, lived-in look of an octopus family’s living room, a spaceship full of little green tourists, and other remarkable scenes. The last photo is of a child, who is holding the photo of a child, who is holding the photo of a child. Using his microscope, the boy finally amplifies the picture seventy times, discovering that the original image contains no fewer than ten others, all photographs of children standing on beaches. The last few photos are in black-and-white. This helps marks the clear passage of time across the decades in the photographs, just as other details show that the children are standing on beaches around the world, from cold northern climates to warm sunny shores. David Wiesner once again lets the pictures tell the story—this time literally—in another masterful wordless picture book that will send readers’ imaginations soaring. CCBC Category: Picture Books for School-Aged Children. 2006, Clarion, 40 pages, $17.00. Ages 5-9.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2006 (Vol. 74, No. 15))
From arguably the most inventive and cerebral visual storyteller in children's literature, comes a wordless invitation to drift with the tide, with the story, with your eyes, with your imagination. A boy at the beach picks up a barnacle-encrusted underwater camera. He develops the film, which produces, first, pictures of a surreal undersea world filled with extraordinary details (i.e., giant starfish bestride the sea carrying mountainous islands on their backs), and then a portrait of a girl holding a picture of a boy holding a picture of another boy . . . and so on . . . and on. Finally, the boy needs a microscope to reveal portraits of children going back in time to a sepia portrait of a turn-of-the-century lad in knickers. The boy adds his own self-portrait to the others, casts the camera back into the waves, and it is carried by a sea creature back to its fantastic depths to be returned as flotsam for another child to find. In Wiesner's much-honored style, the paintings are cinematic, coolly restrained and deliberate, beguiling in their sibylline images and limned with symbolic allusions. An invitation not to be resisted. 2006, Clarion, 40p, $17.00. Category: Picture book. Ages 6 to 11. Starred Review. © 2006 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Caroline Geck (Library Media Connection, February 2007)
David Wiesner, an award-winning children's illustrator and author, tells the exciting adventures of a young boy during his day at the shore in this wordless picture book. Using sequences of photos done in watercolors, the author introduces an inquisitive character who finds an antique underwater camera. The camera and the mystery of the sea fuel his wild imagination. The snapshots show natural objects and sea creatures taking surreal forms, such as big red fish with mechanistic knobs and aliens living on the sea floor, when viewed through the camera lens. These fantastic images stop temporarily when he discovers the camera's photos, each depicting a different culture. The boy decides to take a self-portrait, places all the photos back in the camera, and tosses it into the sea. The camera travels to many distant destinations until a young island girl finds the camera, and the book ends with this cycle beginning anew. Younger children may have trouble making sense of the unorganized groupings of photos. Older readers will delight in piecing together the pictures chronologically and will also enjoy the gripping artwork, including the crashing waves that seem to rumble in one's mind. Recommended. 2006, Clarion Books, 40pp., $17 hc. Ages 6 to 11.

Deborah Stevenson (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, September 2006 (Vol. 60, No. 1))
Wiesner returns with his traditional wordless-narrative format for another fantastical outing. A young boy finds an old underwater camera washed up by an ocean wave, and he excitedly takes its roll of used film in for developing. The result is worth the squirmy wait: a sequence of scenes reveal amazing underwater secrets, from gaudy clockwork fish to castellated tortoises, kindly reading-aloud octopuses to subsurface alien colonies. Perhaps the most fascinating image is the one of another kid, herself holding up a sheaf of what are clearly other amazing photos taken by the peripatetic camera, topped by a picture of still another kid, holding a picture of still another kid, and so on; our protagonist cleverly views the recursive image under a microscope, revealing the series of kids around the world and through the years who have found the camera and its magical images. The protagonist then takes his turn with the tradition, reloading the camera, snapping his own picture with the images he found, and returning the camera to the depths, where complicit sea creatures ferry it along to a faraway beach for discovery by another child. There are a multitude of appeals in the story-the fanciful undersea world, the kids-only secret, the web of connections across time and distance-and Wiesner's cinematic visual narrative fills the story out cunningly, beginning with a reminder (as the protagonist peers through a magnifying glass at a baroquely structured crustacean) that the actual denizens of the sea are already pretty darn fantastical. The boy himself is visually a bit bland and pallid (the kids in the photos actually look more interesting than the protagonist), but the subtle colors and smooth regularity of the watercolor scenes emphasize the normality of the world in which these extraordinary visions turn up, underscoring the "it could happen to you" point. Pair it with Pattison's The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman (BCCB 6/03) for a dual exploration of the way a project can link distant strangers, or just point it at Wiesner fans ready for a new visual adventure. Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 2006, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2006, Clarion, 40p; Reviewed from galleys, $17.00. Grades 2-5.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Spring 2007)
In Wiesner's latest wordless book, a boy at the beach closely examines items washed up from the sea; when a wave brings forth an old camera, the boy's viewing takes a radical shift. He gets the film developed, allowing Wiesner's imagination great play. The meticulous and rich detail of the clue- and fancy-strewn watercolors makes this fantasy involving and convincing. Category: Picture Books. 2006, Clarion, 40pp, 17.00. Ages 4 to 9. Rating: 2: Superior, well above average.

Katrina Bender (The Kutztown University Book Review, Spring 2007)
A young boy at the beach with his family finds an old-fashioned underwater camera which has washed up on the beach. When he develops the film inside, he is stunned to see photos of incredible underwater scenes: a mechanical fish, an octopus reading to fish in an underwater living room, tiny aliens sightseeing with sea horses, and more. The last photo shows a girl holding a photo of another child, who is also holding a photo, and so on. The boy is able to look at all the photos back through time using his microscope. He then takes a photo of himself and tosses the camera back into the ocean, where it floats to another child on another beach, but not before taking more unusual photos! This book certainly deserves its Caldecott Medal; the detailed, colorful illustrations clearly tell the story with no need for text. The masterful change of perspectives in the pictures reflect the story’s emphasis on looking at the world around us with a new perspective as well; readers will be intrigued by the camera, and conclude the story wondering, “What is really out there?” Category: Wordless Book.. 2006, Clarion Books, $17.00. Ages 5 to 9.

Leta Tillman (The Lorgnette-Heart of Texas Reviews (Vol. 19, No. 3))
A young boy is at the beach with his family when he discovers an underwater camera that has washed up on the shore. After developing the film inside, he discovers some amazing photos of a windup fish, a hot-air balloon puffer sailing above the water, and miniature green aliens with giant sea horses. The last photo is one of a girl holding a photo of a boy holding a photo of another child, and so forth. As the young boy further investigates with his magnifying glass and finally his microscope, the last figure in the picture is a boy from the early 1900s waving from a beach. This wordless book by Wiesner with its watercolor illustrations has a way of mesmerizing the reader into feeling that he is actually on the beach with the camera and with the spray of the water in his face. The details are extraordinary, compelling the reader to keep looking for more of them to keep the story flowing from page to page. Readers are almost sorry to come to the end of the book. But the last page gives them hope that the story will continue in some way for years to come. This is a “MUST” purchase for every collection. It will surely become a classic for the days and years ahead. Fiction. Grades K-4. 2006, Clarion Books, Unpaged., $17.00. Ages 5 to 10.