Caldecott
Medals
Acceptance
Got some flotsam?
Yeah, Fve got some,
Got some jetsam?
‘No, but Iean get some.
‘hen I was in the fourth grade,
my teacher read a poem by
(Ogden Nash to the class. I've
never forgotien it, From that point on,
the words flotsam and jetsam were part of
‘my vocabulary. They were funny-sound-
ing and interesting In meaning. While
flotsam technically refers specifically to
maritime debris, I like the more col-
|oguial definition referring to odds and
| ends that can turn up anywhere—on the
| beach, on Jand, even in your mind.
Flotsam on @ cosmic scale—images,
Speech 3 tes tnt owas soins tc
Of Flotsam, Jetsam,
and Another
Caldecott
David Wiesner
David. Mesner i the weer oF mo
BOT. Calcecott Hector Rotem
publibed by. Clon Books hs
‘occeplonce seach Wes deleted
at the Arua! Conferance of ho
American. library Asociation
Wioshiegon OC dune 24-2007.
‘time and space—appeals to me now.
As a kid, though, I only knew the down-
‘to-earth kind. The most remarkable
piece of florsam Fever found was buried
in a brook that ran through the woods
5 “at one end of my neighborhood. The
‘woods seemed huge back then, but they
were really just an undeveloped acre
ofland. It was an exciting and mysteri
F 0us place to play, and, despite repeated
severe cases of poison ivy, I eouldi’t
keep away,
4
One day when I was eight or nine years
@ old, my friend Brian Wilbur and I were
digging around in the brook, as we often
did. We were probably trying to build a
dam, one of our favorite activites. We
were soaked: Suddenly, we saw som
jo thing poking out of the mud under the
water. appeared tobe a face. And aleg
And they weren't human,
[dug my hand into the mud and pulled
VW the object out—it was very heavy—and
rinsed it off in the flowing water, It was
a black metal figure of a bull, about six
inches long. Atone time it hed had ivory
horns, but they had been broken off and
only stumps remained. Its posture was
‘wonderfully contorted, with the head
lowered and twisting to look up. The face
‘was an intense grimace, and the features
and musculature were rendered in min-
ute detail,
We were stunned. This wasnt a toy. It
\was a grown-up thing, How could ithave
12
i
&
e
}
gotten here, in our brook, in our woods?
Twas fascinated by the idea that this
}3 object had a whole unknown history. 'm
sure that my imaginings were far more
exotic than reality—but who knows?
XC €
ye
Yr kept that bull on my draving table
for year right up unt 1983, when the
apartment buldng my wife, Kin, and
Tere living in burned doven and! took
everything we owned witht Fortuna,
wwe didn ave much a the tine. There
were a few very hard losses, ike Kimis
\Gcello and my college sketchbooks. But in
the days afer the ire as | mentally went
over the contents of the apartment, I
an cecal the pang Tet when I realized
thatthe ball was gone was ike losing
alte piece of my childhood.
It
[After «Jong time, my friend Brian and 1
got together. We hadnt seen each other
for at least twenty years, but it took
him less than five minutes to ask, “Do
you sill have that bull we found in the
brooke" I was amazed! He hadnt seen
this thing since he was a kid and yet it
was sil lodged in his mind as fly as |
‘had been in mine. Irwas maybe even
‘more remarkable because he hadnt set
eyes on the object in nearly thirty years,
since Twas the one who kept the bull
after we found it. How did that come
about? Well, its funny, but my memory
ge's litle hazy about this part of the
‘story. There seemed to be some dispute
lover who really discovered i. Let's just
say that atthe time Iwas year older and
alot bigger than he was
q
Anyway, Brian proposed that since had
had ital tet ine, maybehe ould have
aun keeping i. Which would have
been a great ending to thi story, except
that had to tell him about the fe. We
‘were both prety bummed abou losing
the ball, but we liked the Idea that It
as out there somewhere, Maybe it had
fallen off the dumpster as the building
debris was belng carted wa. Maybe
it was poking trough the ground in
Jaf tat as being developed, And
maybe, hopefully another Kd found it. QU
As a story ido, a Kd stumbling across
something extaordinary, eomeihing
tt sectts fo reveal, had been foating
ttound my rind for some tie wen {
started working on this book. | am not
SumexPall 2007 Cibo nd ibrasoeconsciously aware that my childhood
flotsam story played a part in this, but I
think it had to have been some kind of
motivation. Visually, though, this story
about finding something has always
taken place on the beach. Or, as we say
ZB in New Jersey, down the shore.
From before | was born until I was four-
teen, my family spent the last two weeks
of August on Long Beach Island, New
Jersey. Squeezed into the back of our
station wagon, I always felt that the tip
there took days.
Crossing the causeway to getto the sland
2p as like arriving in another world. When
we gotto the house, I would immediately
(25 _ran down to the beach, Coming up over
‘he rest of the sand dune and experienc-
ing the sight and smell and sound of he
ocean was always overwhelming to my
senses, The island seemed to me lke an
enchantéd land. Tt was a shock to leat
that people actually lived there yeat-
round, I saw evidence of that enchant-
ment in the permanent residents from
whom we rented a house—the Segals
& ‘As a kid, I thought, Wow, they live at the
beach and theyre named the Seagulls!
26
Sometimes the ocean water would col-
lect in a tide pool high up on the beach.
One day I saw @ group of people gath-
ered around, pointing at something. 1
approached and saw a fish tapped in the
pool, Actually, I wasntt really sure if it was
Aish at al was yellow with back spots.
Te was blown op round, like a balloon. t
‘was covered with spikes, I had beak It
Jooked like an alien It elcted from me
the simultaneous reactions of “Eww!”
and “Coool! And then [realized tha this
thing this puffer fish, had been out there
6 In the water where I had just been swim:
‘NV ming, So, there might be more of them,
And there might be... wel, who knew
what else might be out there?
&
After Lwon a second Caldecott, for The
‘Three Pigs, people kept saying such help-
ful things as, “Gee, how are you going to
top that?” Hmm. I hada‘t been think:
ing about topping anything. Maybe, T
thought, it would be a good idea to step
‘out of the limelight for a bit. I began to
think that I should do a smaller-scaled,
quieter book. And, for a change of pace,
one with a text. My previous two books
SanamarPll 207+ Chideo and iatee
were forty-eight and forty pages and
had taken ages to complete. [was deter-
mined not to go over thirty-two pages
this time, and I wasnt going to et three
orfour years go by between books again.
So, five years later, T came out with «
wordless, forty-page book
39, :
"The creative process can be such « pain
Ji the feck TS not lke T didnt really
‘ry to make that quieter thiny-two-page
book with a text. I was concurrently
working on three different story ideas.
‘The first, which is the one my contract
was for, was about alions Janding in a
backyard. It had a great beginning, but
nothing as good to follow it.The second
‘dea was about fish living in a house. i
had lots and lots of great imagery, but no
plot to speak of
The third idea was Flotsam. I know from
the start that Flotsam would Be Whe tlle
3) of whatever my kid-on-the-beach story
3
turned out to be, At first I bad no fea
‘what the kid would find, I started by
making it a small crystalline sphere.
How this object would reveal any hidden
secrets, [had no idea. It was really just a
placeholder unti I figured out what that
‘object actually wes. 33
nits first incarnation, the story spanned
from the dawn of time to the present,
It then developed two parallel story
lines with two different, tightly format-
ted design layouts that would merge
at the end—a visual device that I really
liked. Eventually, I decided that a camera
gould be a great way to show the secrets
‘beneath the waves. In one version it
was a tatking camera, | then introduced
a text. My main character was a gil
For a time the story was about sibling
rivalry. For a long time the story focused
+
Cala Meal dae See
too closely on the journey the camera
made. At some point my main character
became a boy.
All the elements of a story seemed to
bbe scattered throughout the many book
‘dummies that I had made, but [hadn't
yethad the*Aha” moment. Thestory was
pushing in new directions, but I was stil
clinging to a strict design template that
wouldnt let the pictures evolve as well,
realized that I had to put aside all my
preconceptions and start over. This time
should just tell the kid’ story.
The pictures flowed out, the text disap-
peated, and the parallel stories became
one,
¥
[As Twas working my way through the
fantastical undersea photos that the
camera would reveal, the final piece of
the story fell into place. The camera had
shown octopi reading in a makeshift
living room, sea turtles with cities on
their backs, a puller fish hot-air balloon,
starfish islands, and aliens on vacation,
Tneeded one more extraordinary photo,
and suddenly, surprisingly, I saw ian
image of another kid looking directly out
at the viewer, And that kid in the photo
‘was holding a photo of another kid, who
‘was holding a photo of another kid, who
‘was holding a photo of another kid, back
through all the kids who had had the
camera before, finally reaching the child
who had started ital
Aha! At last, this was what my charae-
‘er was meant to find on the beach—
another kid. That connection was what 1
iad wanted to achieve all along,
34
Relinquishing my original, tightly strue-
tured, parallel page designs allowed a
single, more organic design to develop.
Despite my intention to stick to thirty
two pages, [found that I really needed
more room to give the book a greater
visual variety. At thirty-two pages, the
book would have had too many dense
‘ultipancled pages. Forty pages let me 38
alternate these multipaneled pages with
single full-page images and double-page
spreads to give a visually interesting
thythm to the flow of the pictures. The
ye scans the multipanel page quickly
‘The detall-rich double-page spread Is @
place were the eye can lingerand spendColeen Wedel Arete eect 3qq
time slowly exploring. Especially in a
wordless book, this kind of visual variety
makes for a far more exciting reading
experience.
T draw and revise compulsively until
each composition is exactly as it will
appear in the final painting. The one
place 1 don't plan ahead is in the color
palette, Not until T begin to paint the
first piece of book do [truly know what
the color concept for that book will be.
Tuesday was about intense nighttime
blues and indigos. The Three Pigs was all
about white space.
‘With Flotsam, the frst piece I painted
vas the first double-page spread of the
boy on the beach looking through the
magnifying glass. Its a clear, sunny day.
His beachcombing equipment, much
of which is made out of primary-col
of the book that T eventually produced,
Tt would be nice if the path were always
straightforward, but, in the end, I simply
‘ust that if focus on the process, some-
thing valuable will result
There aze mbt people who help me
achieve that reult They are the sane
people [ have mentioned. previously,
then Thave addressed tis gehering 1
Bee that. ike that lot
Dinah Stevenson, Carol Goldenberg,
and Donna McCarthy ate, respectively,
my editor, art director, and director of
production. Those titles superficially
‘describe our relationship. They are, wuly,
my collaborators.
Dinah Stevenson had great patience and
great wisdom throughout the Flotsara
sage. Her input during my creative
Not until I begin to paint the first piece of a book
do I truly know what the color concept for that
book will be.
‘red plastic, surrounds him. He is lying
fon a patterned beach towel. Uh-oh, I
thought, this book is going to be about
bright colors,
{ve spent most of my life running away
from bright colors, but there was no
escape, $0 I dove into the bathing suits,
‘T-shirts, buckets, shovels, and beach
towels. The culmination of this caval-
cade of color was the decision to fil the
‘cover of the book with a close-up of ared
snapper. There is more cadmium red in
that one painting than in all the other art
Thave ever produced.
Deliberately leaving part of the process
open to spontaneity can be scary But to
‘x Sfow as an artist, Mave to be willing to
move into unfaliaeteritoy. is there
that Team new things and keep my ce-
Xative process fom becoming routine.
Itcan also getscary when oneideadoesntt
‘work out, and then another doesn't, and
(ume drags on, Panic can set in, But I've
PF been through this before. Only two of
my contracts have on them the name
u
meandering was thoughtful and sub-
tly delivered—particularly during the
cheese incident. At one point in the pro-
‘cess Ihad the idea of making the camera
talk. The Chatti-cam, as I called it, would
say, “Cheese!” Not, "Say cheese!"—I
thought just “Cheese” would be funnier.
fanny, in fact, that I decided 1 should
retitle the book Cheese. While her words
argued politely, yet firmly, against this,
her eyes were saying, “Not in a million
years!” Thank you for that, Dinah,
Incredibly, Carol Goldenberg is even
And, once again, to everyone at Clarion
Books, especially Marjorie Naughton
and Joann Hill, thank you for all you do
for me.
For the past twenty-eight years, Dilys
[Evans has been my agent. Again, that is
term that only superficially describes
our relationship. Throughout our many
adventures together, she has been first
and foremost my good friend.
When Iwas growing up, artistic insecu-
rity never had a chance to take hold at
home, My mother and my father and my
sisters and my brother always supported
and encouraged my art, unconditionally.
twas wonderful environmentin whieh 5j
to create Likewise, where I work now is
Ail ould ever as for Thavea studio at
hhome with my family around me. Kim, 5
Kevin, and Jaime are the audionce I want
to please most. Tis is the best environ-
ment in which to create.
One of the tap ten questions that kids
ask is, “Which one of your books is your
favorite?” They really seem to want me
to pickone, but I can't, Each of my books
hhas been a distinct creative experience,
with its own struggles and insights, Bach
is unique to me.
When the phone rang that Monday
‘morning in January, [looked atthe caller
ID, saw “Washington State Convention
Center" andthought,“No way” Butwhen
T picked up the phone, Janice Del Negro
informed me that, indeed, way. Ieis hard
to describe my reactions, Elation over
the fact that Flotsam had been chosen
for the Caldecott collided with the aver-
‘whelming realization that | was recelving
the award for a third time. Three times is
a lot to absorb, and I'm still working on
smore compulsive than . Who knew sln- Fit. For now, !am enjoying the recognition
ple black lines around pictures could
lead to so many sleepless nights? Putting
Flotsam together was exciting and chal-
ing, and we continually found solu-
tions that added even more to the book.
All this work might be wasted ifthe book
‘were not printed with such attentive.
rnoss and skill I never lose sleep over
this, knowing that Donna McCarthy is
overseeing the production of my books.
Her care and meticulousness are a joy
to behold,
ig
that Flotsam is recelving. To be singled
ut by fifteen people who have devoted
aan entire year to the jury processisa very
special thing. Thank you, Janice, and all
the members of the 2007 Caldecott com:
mittee, for this ineredible honor.
‘What will I say when people ask me,
“How are you going to top this?” Well, 'm
thinking about a smaller, quieter book,
But you never know.
thank you. &
Summer 2007 Chico nd ses