Flotsam
by David Wiesner (2006)
2007 Caldecott Medal Winner
I distinctly remember the images from some of Wiesner's older books, like Tuesday, from my elementary school days. His recent Caldecott Award winner, Flotsam, tells a more compelling fantasy story than I remember from some of his other books. This wordless book has some pages put together in like comic frames, and others that simply show the minutiae of items on the beach, or the complexity of the pictures from the 'flotsam' camera that the boy in the story finds. No matter what the page's formatting, there is incredible detail in each image. The fantasy aspects of the pictures are mysterious, but they combine familiar objects and sea life in a very natural way. I love the exploratory quality of the story and its main character, and I enjoy the ambiguous but telling title of the book, as well.
Like other wordless books this book lends itself to creative writing exercises or pre-reading activities for young children or ELLs. The fantasy aspects of the stories will make it very appealing for students and their interpretations could be widely varied. For a class activity each student could be assigned to write about one of the seven pictures that the boy found in the camera, and since each story would have to integrate the camera in some way they would all have a cohesive quality despite their radically different content (like Wiesner's book itself!). Because the illustrations have so much detail creative writing exercises can combine a lot of descriptive words for the settings, combined with the creative aspects of the stories.
Shadow
by Suzy Lee (2010)
Shadow may be the first (mostly) wordless picture book I have ever read and I am glad it was my first. Lee creatively orients the book so that the reader is encouraged to flip pages from bottom to top. Using the seam between pages she creates two distinct worlds - the world of the girl's imagination and the real world. But the two world's meld and distort in the middle of the story and both worlds become imagined. Due to the orientation and style of the two worlds the book can also be read "upside down" to show a completely different perspective on the story. Lee beautifully uses black and white illustrations highlighted with yellow to show the morphing and changing worlds. I found myself flipping back and forth in the beginning pages seeing how a real world object in an attic morphed into a creature or a plant. The combination of artistic styles also draws reader attention to changes in the world. The mundane objects in the attic are drawn in a very simple way, so the girl herself drawn in bolder lines and the bold images of the imagined world come alive.
In a classroom this book could be used for a number of different activities. Creative writing is the first type of activity that comes to mind, and can be adapted for any age group or for any language proficiency level. Writing a story around the visual one that Suzy Lee has created will open the floor for different interpretations but will also be differentiated automatically in terms of ability level because of the nature of the task. This type of activity could also be adapted for a group storytelling activity, where the class as a whole (or small groups) do an invented read aloud of the book. Students could also use the books prompt of imagined worlds to consider what their world would look like and where they would get the idea for certain parts of it (like the wolf in the girl's invented world that was inspired by a broken boot). Wordless books seem to inspire an abundance of creative lesson plans.
