David Wiesner reviews

David Wiesner Flotsam; illustrated by the author
     40 pp. Clarion
     Reviewed 9/06
With its careful array of beachcombed items, the title page spread of Wiesner’s latest picture book makes it look like one of those Eyewitness books, but the following wordless story is far stranger than fact. In clueand fancy-strewn full-page paintings and panels, a boy at the beach closely examines items and animals washed in from the sea; when a wave deposits an old camera on the shore, his viewing takes a radical shift. He gets the camera’s film developed at a nearby shop, allowing Wiesner’s bountiful imagination great play in the series of photos the boy then examines: a robot fish, an octopus reading aloud to its offspring, giant starfish with islands on their backs. And: a seaside photo of a girl holding a seaside photo of a boy, holding a seaside photo of another child, ad infinitum. The inquisitive boy’s ready magnifying glass and microscope allow him to see further and further into the photo, and further back in time, as revealed by the increasingly oldfashioned clothes worn by the children pictured. What to do but add himself to the sequence? The meticulous and rich detail of Wiesner’s watercolors makes the fantasy involving and convincing; children who enjoyed scoping out Banyai’s Zoom books and Lehman’s The Red Book will keep a keen eye on this book about a picture of a picture of a picture of a. . . . R.S.

David Wiesner Hurricane; illustrated by the author
    32 pp. Clarion/Houghton
    Reviewed 1/91
The natural disasters that one survives are usually among the best-remembered signposts of childhood. In this handsome book, David Wiesner captures perfectly the aura of a giant storm from a child’s perspective. Careful preparations are made for the impending hurricane—the windows taped, the family cat rounded up—while outside the world grows dark, with whirling leaves creating a “‘green blizzard.’” Weather reports add to the realistic tone created by the author-artist’s paintings, which resemble formal family portraits. When the lights go out and the family is sitting by the fireplace in a darkened room, “it felt safe with everybody together, even though there were creaks and groans and sometimes great roaring sounds coming from outside.” Realism gives way to fantasy once the two boys in the family enter the post-hurricane yard the next day. A great fallen elm provides opportunity for much imaginative play. It becomes the background for romps through jungles, encounters with pirate ships, and interplanetary travel. A perfect playground, the tree is “big enough for secret dreams, small enough for shared adventure.” When workers arrive with chainsaws to cut it up and haul it away, the children are despondent, until they remember that a neighboring tree still stands—potential victim to another storm. Not an adult’s fancy, this wish, but one that children will appreciate. Pairing the book with Seymour Simon’s Storms (Morrow) affords opportunities for sharing information, fears, and dreams of adventure. N.V.

David Wiesner June 29, 1999; illustrated by the author
    32 pp. Clarion/Houghton
    Reviewed 1/93
On May 11, 1999, Holly Evans sends vegetable seedlings into the sky as part of her science experiment “to study the effects of extraterrestrial conditions on vegetable growth and development.” By the end of June, gigantic vegetables are spotted in the sky. Playful, alliterative language catalogues the sightings: “Cucumbers circle Kalamazoo…Artichokes advance on Anchorage.” But Holly knows something has gone awry in the “‘airborne vegetal event’” when vegetables she did not include in her research begin appearing; she decides that the huge specimens that have captured the attention of the country are not the result of her experimentation. As she sits in her vegetable treehouse, pondering the imponderable—“‘and whose broccoli is in my backyard?’” —the scene shifts to the ionosphere, where the source of the giant vegetables, as well as the fate of Holly’s seedlings, is disclosed. It is the alien Arcturians’ great good fortune that Holly’s vegetables happen to float by their spaceship, because on June 29, 1999, a cook on their starcruiser accidentally sent their entire supply of food drifting toward earth. Thanks to Holly and their Mega-Veg Growth Accelerator, the Arcturians now have a feast in the making. Caldecott-medalist Wiesner clearly remains entranced with the incongruity of earthbound objects flying, as explored in Tuesday (Clarion); here an understated, fairly straightforward text is a perfect foil for the outrageous scenes of vegetables run amok. Realistic watercolors reveal red peppers that need to be roped down, beans with bemused Arizona sheep clambering over them, and gargantuan peas floating down the Mississippi like logs to the sawmill. Fans of Wiesner’s offbeat sense of humor will be delighted. E.F.

David Wiesner Sector 7; illustrated by the author
    48 pp. Clarion/Houghton
    Reviewed 9/99
Finding shapes in clouds is a grand pastime on a lazy day. But what makes those shapes anyway? And what if you had the power to alter them, to create new forms and details when amorphous arrangements are the norm? In a fittingly wordless book, this is exactly what happens to one young boy on a field trip to the top of the Empire State Building—where anything can happen, if the movies are to be believed. This time, as the building is veiled in mist, a friendly cloud appears to the boy and after a few playful moments takes him on a tour of Sector 7, a factory-like satellite where clouds are shaped, classified, and distributed. The structure is like a Victorian railroad station with signs noting arrival and departure times, but tubes shaped like large funnels, not tracks, disperse the clouds to their assigned locations. The organization is hierarchical, regimented, and traditional. Perhaps that is why the playful cloud interjects a new element—a boy with imagination who can draw. And draw he does, fantastic shapes of sea life that confound the regular staff members who do not appreciate his artistry. Expelled for insubordination, he is sent via cloud-carrier back to the Empire State Building just in time to rejoin his schoolmates for the return trip. But there is a different aura about him, and the clouds he inspired are amazing onlookers—much to the consternation of Sector 7! As with all wordless books, individual readers will supply the “text”; consequently, interpretations of exactly what’s going on may differ depending upon age, sophistication, and experience. The illustrations, ranging from full-page spreads to small vignettes, are startlingly and powerfully conceived, the fanciful cloud-shapes both funny and elegant. Reminiscent of both William Pene du Bois’s Lion and Pat Cummings’s C.L.O.U.D.S., the book nevertheless ascends to new heights. In fact, it definitely inspires a bit of sky-watching. M.M.B.

David WiesnerThe Three Pigs; illustrated by the author
      40 pp. Clarion
      Reviewed 5/01
David Wiesner’s postmodern interpretation of this tale plays imaginatively with traditional picture book and story conventions and with readers’ expectations of both. (Though with Wiesner, we should know by now to expect the unexpected.) Astute readers will notice the difference between the cover’s realistic gouache portrait of the three pigs (who stare directly out at the viewer with sentient expressions) and the simple outlined watercolor artwork on the title page. In fact, the style of the illustrations and the way the characters are rendered shifts back and forth a few times before the book is done, as Wiesner explores the possibility of different realities within a book’s pages. The text, set in a respectable serif typeface, begins by following the familiar pattern—pigs build houses, wolf huffs and puffs, wolf eats two pigs, etc. But while the text natters on obliviously, the pigs actually step (or are huffed and puffed) out of the muted-color panel illustrations without being eaten Escaping their sepia holding lines and the frames of their predictable storybook world, they enter a stark white landscape where they are depicted realistically with more intricate shading. The now-3-D-looking pigs, released from the story’s inevitability, explore this surrealistic realm. The perplexed wolf remains behind in the two-dimensional pages which, when viewed from the pigs’ new vantage point, stand vertically in space, looking altogether like paper dominoes waiting to be knocked down. And that’s what the three pigs do, with glee. The pigs’ informal banter appears in word balloons in a sans-serif font; a few striking wordless spreads feature the pigs flying (this is Wiesner, after all) across blank spreads on a paper airplane made from a page of their story. Obviously there’s a lot going on here, but once you get your bearings, this is a fantastic journey told with a light touch. The pigs encounter other free-standing story pages; they enter and exit a nursery rhyme and then a folktale, morphing into and out of each one’s illustrative style. Saccharine, cotton-candy illustrations cloy “Hey Diddle Diddle” (“Let’s get out of here!” one pig exclaims); precise black-and-white line drawings dignify a folktale about a dragon who guards a golden rose. The cat and its fiddle as well as the chivalrous dragon join the pigs in full-color, realistic definition, and eventually the five friends end up back at the pigs’ story. After shaking the type off the pages, the animals re-enter the tale— but this time on the pigs’ own terms. The last page shows them all happily ensconced in the full-page watercolor illustration, using letters of text to write their own happy ending while the wolf sits outside at a nonthreatening distance. Wiesner may not be the first to thumb his nose at picture-book design rules and storytelling techniques, but he puts his own distinct print on this ambitious endeavor. There are lots of teaching opportunities to be mined here—or you can just dig into the creative possibilities of unconventionality. K.F.

Profiles of David Wiesner | List of all reviews on this site