David Wiesner earns record-tying third Caldecott Medal for Flotsam
Winning a Caldecott Medal marks a crowning career achievement for most illustrators. Winning twice places you among a handful of people who have earned similar honors, such as Chris Van Allsburg, Leo and Diane Dillon, Nonny Hogrogrian, and Robert McCloskey. In winning his third Caldecott Medal this January for Flotsam (Clarion), David Wiesner joins Marcia Brown as the only three-time winner of this honor, given annually by the American Library Association to recognize the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.
Still, Wiesner takes it all in stride, professing to be just as surprised and excited this time as he was when he won in 2002 for The Three Pigs and in 1992 for Tuesday. “This is not something one gets jaded about,” says Wiesner, who also has two Caldecott Honor Books: Free Fall and Sector 7.
“It’s not like it was on my mind to go out and get awards,” Wiesner says. “Each time you sit down and start something new, you always wonder, ‘Do I have another book in me?’ I’m just trying to make a book to the best of my ability.”
While the notoriety of being interviewed on the Today Show is nice, Wiesner notes that day-to-day life quickly brings you back down to reality. “I still have to take out the trash,” he says, laughing. He adds that he does enjoy seeing the poster ALA does showing all the Caldecott winners through the years and realizing that he is “part of the legacy.”
Flotsam began, Wiesner says, with “a vague idea about something that would connect kids across time and space.” Over the next year and a half, the wordless story went through several different variations before finding its final form. “It was the introduction of the camera that pulled it together,” he says.
In the book, a boy finds an underwater camera washed up on the beach. Inside is a roll of film depicting fantastic underwater pictures, as well as photos of other children who have found the camera. The book ends with the boy photographing himself and sending the camera on another ocean journey, where it eventually winds up in the hands of a girl on a faraway beach.
Several of Wiesner’s books fall into the category of whimsy and fantasy; he says he has always loved science fiction and the type of imagery it evokes. He also likes to involve humor and “mixing the extraordinary and the ordinary.” Tuesday and Sector 7, for instance, involve fanciful tales involving frogs and clouds, respectively.
The Three Pigs, meanwhile, takes the title characters on a rollicking romp out of their own story and into other adventures before they make their way back “home.” The idea of looking at “what’s behind the pictures in the book” initially came from watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Wiesner said.
Wiesner collaborated with his wife, Kim Kahng, on The Loathsome Dragon, a retelling of a popular folktale. The illustrations were coming along well, but he found himself stuck on the text. His wife came to the rescue, borrowing the manuscript and coming back a day or so later with a rewritten version that ultimately served as the book’s text. Since she is a surgeon, her picture book credit makes an interesting entry in a curriculum vitae filled with technical publications.
Some of Wiesner’s best-known works are wordless picture books. That format, he says, is “something that I started to come across fairly young, and it immediately clicked with me. I find it a very comfortable thing to do.”
“It’s a different kind of reading experience,” he adds, because the author’s voice isn’t telling the story; each reader is. ”It’s been great to see how kids get inspired to retell the story, often on paper with writing.
“It’s been really wonderful to hear the different ways the books get used in schools,” he says. He finds that they are used a lot by ESL teachers and for creative writing. He says he recently received a package from a school that had written and produced a play based on Sector 7.
Creative types such as authors and musicians often find themselves hard pressed to follow up bestselling books or hit songs. So what is Wiesner working on now? He just finished doing a series of covers for a new boxed set of The Chronicles of Narnia slated for release this summer. Beyond that, he is in the early stages of a book, but he hesitates to discuss it because it’s still subject to change at this point. “I have only had one contract where the name of the book on the contract has been the name of the finished story,” he said.
But given his track record, one thing seems certain. Wherever the journey leads him, it’s bound to come to a successful end.
Elite company. (April 2007). Reading Today, 24(5), 30.
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