Flotsam by David Wiesner



Call me a partypooper, but I did not enjoy this book.  The book has no words, but the plot is told through the illustrations. A young boy finds a camera washed up on the beach and takes the film to be developed.  In these pictures, the boy sees photos of a fantasy-filled underwater world and of boys and girls who have taken pictures of themselves holding pictures of other boys and girls.  The boy realizes the camera has come in contact with boys and girls from many different periods of time and different places.  The book ends with the boy throwing the camera back to sea and another child finding it. 

Although, I prefer books with words, I don't know that there could have been a more clever way to do this book.  It was almost as if the author was trying to cause the reader to have a true imaginative experience-one in which the reader has to imagine the dialogue and thoughts of the characters as well as the strange underwater creatures seen in the photos.