Flotsam

Flotsam is a wordless picture book that follows the story of a boy exploring the beach, where he finds a vintage camera washed up on the shore. The boy develops the film, and the camera tells a story about all the places it has been and oceanic marvels it has seen. This story is largely told from the perspective of the film camera.

The illustrations in Flotsam are very detailed, and a wide variety of colors are used to create visual interest and capture the diverse underwater world pictured. This specific watercolor illustration of normal fish and robotic-looking fish contains contrast in the colors used. The bright reds and blues make the fish pop from the background. The fact that the background is just blue and contains no other marine life shows how vast the ocean is and how much there is to explore.

Some pages of this book again have comic-style strip illustrations. Another interesting aspect of this book is the pictures-within-pictures. The boy can be seen analyzing film that he took on the camera. The illustrations within illustrations give the reader more to observe within each individual page and uncover hidden surprises along the way. Using a magnifying glass, the boy can see pictures of the people who found the camera before him. Going back far enough, these pictures even start to be in black and white. These illustrations also contain more muted colors such as light blue, yellow, and purple to contrast the whimsical, colorful underwater photos. The illustrations of the beach also seem to be more sparse overall, and have an old-fashioned look.

This illustration features seahorses, aliens, and fish. In this image, Wiesner draws the aliens with differing facial expressions and interacting with each other. There are many small details for the readers to notice and use to create their own story. Wiesner plays with scale by making the aliens and fish tiny, and have seahorses towering over them. The aliens are also the most vibrantly colored objects in this image which makes them stand out as the focal point. This illustration also has a lot of curves shapes. According to Molly Bang, curved surfaces make us feel more secure (Bang, 71). This image is meant to make the reader curious about the wonders of the ocean, not scared.

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