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About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 25, 2021)
THE BULLETIN • MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 2021 A9 © 2021 by Vicki Whiting, Editor Jeff Schinkel, Graphics Vol. 37, No. o. 8 David Wiesner has illustrated more than 20 award-winning books and has won the Caldecott Medal three times. Many of his books have no words but the highly hly creative illustrations spark the imagination and take readers on amazing adventures. Can you number these David Wiesner books in alphabetical order? I Got It! Tuesdays Mr. Wuffles Free Fall Children are born curious. From their earliest days, sensory exploration brings delight and wonder. New discoveries expand their minds. When they unlock the joy of reading, their world widens further. Magic happens. Kid Scoop opens the doors of discovery for elementary school children by providing interactive, engaging and relevant age-appropriate materials designed to awaken the magic of reading at school, at home, and throughout their lives. For more information about our literacy non-profit, visit kidscoopnews.org Flotsam A new book from David Wiesner Q: Is the story Hurricane based on your childhood? Did you have a cat named Hannibal? Q: After reading Sector 7, I wanted to know if you grew up in New York City? A: Yes, Hurricane is the only one of my stories that actually happened to me. Playing on that tree was the best! I had a cat, but her name was Fuzzy (really). I changed the name to fit in with the adventuring nature of the kids. A: I grew up in New Jersey, not too far from New York. I really enjoyed going into the city. I loved the architecture—especially the Empire State Building. It was great to be able to use it in my story. I designed the Sector 7 factory in the sky by looking at a lot of New York City buildings. I then created a place with bits of many of them all together. To make the pictures, I used old photos of my house, cat, yard, bedroom, etc. for reference. So, what you see in the book is where I lived and grew up. The kids are not me or my brother, although I used our names. I used the kids of some friends as my models. Q: Why do Tuesday and Sector 7 have very few words and almost all pictures? Q: Why do you draw fish in many of your stories? Is it your favorite animal? A: A wordless book offers a different kind of an experience from one with text, for both the author and the reader. There is no author’s voice telling the story. Each viewer reads the book in his or her own way. The reader is an integral part of the storytelling process. As a result, there are as many versions of Tuesday, Sector 7, Free Fall, and Mr. Wuffles, as there are readers. As the author of a wordless book, I don’t have to concern myself about whether the reader’s interpretation of each and every detail is the same as mine. My own view has no more, and no less, validity than that of any other viewer. A: I don’t have any fish for pets. I like the way fish look and I like to draw and paint them. They appeal to me visually. They are very strange and fantastical looking, so I use them a lot when I make pictures and stories. Q: How do you come up with the ideas for your picture books? A: Tuesday came about because I was asked to create a painting for the cover of a magazine for kids. I was told that I could do whatever I wanted, but they let me know that there were a lot of articles about frogs in this issue. Frogs are very cool looking— soft, round, lumpy, and really goofy-looking. I wanted to draw them. I got out my sketchbook and began to draw frogs. I then drew one on a lily pad. The shape they made together, the round blob of the frog on top of the circular, saucer-like bottom, made me think of something else that had the same shape—a flying saucer. And then I thought, “why not make the frog and lily pad fly around, like a flying saucer?” Q: What is your favorite movie and what makes it your favorite? For the cover, I showed a group of frogs rising up out of a swamp, heading off to some kind of mischief. I liked the frogs as characters. They had distinct personalities. I wondered what happened before and after this scene. I then began to create the story that would become my book Tuesday. In David Wiesner’s book Art & Max, two lizards have a crazy adventure of drawing and painting each other. Draw a picture of your best friend in the space below, and use lots of colors to create some wild art! A: 2001: A Space Odyssey is my favorite movie. It is a very complex story and it is told almost entirely with images. I learned a lot about telling stories visually from that movie. Kid Scoop thanks David Wiesner and the students at Bahia Vista Elementary School in San Rafael, CA who came up with these great questions for Mr. Wiesner. HURRICANE CALDECOTT WIESNER TUESDAY WUFFLES AUTHOR FROGS WORDS FUZZY MEDAL STORY PAINT FISH DRAW CITY In this hilarious gem from triple Caldecott winner David Wiesner, it’s big sister to the rescue when a new baby is delivered to a family of robots and the adults are flummoxed by technical difficulties. A new baby’s arrival is a big moment in any family, even a family of robots. Award winner David Wiesner captures the excitement and fanfare when baby Flange appears—as a crate full of components. The adults bungle the process of assembling Flange, with catastrophic results. Big sister Cathy, with her handy toolbox and advanced knowledge of robotics and IT, hasn’t been allowed to help, but in the ensuing chaos she calmly clears up the technical difficulties and bonds with her new baby brother. A shout-out for girl scientists and makers, Robobaby is an eye-opening and engaging blend of the familiar and the fantastic. Picture Story Cut out a photo from today’s newspaper. Cut out the photo only—no caption or words. Glue the photo to a piece of paper and then make up and write a story to go with the photo. Standards Link: Reading Comprehension: Follow simple, written directions. S P D R O H T U A A W O R D S U F R S S This week’s word: F T A K E R I S T E ADVENTURE U N W S O R S M O L The noun adventure means an exciting, possibly risky, journey or experience. Z I D G A I H G R F Z A S I N C I T Y F Y P A T L A D E M U I W I E S N E R O W N T T O C E D L A C Standards Link: Letter sequencing. Recognize identical words. Skim and scan reading. Recall spelling patterns. Looking for an adventure, I decided to ride the double loop rollercoaster at the amusement park. Try to use the word adventure in a sentence today when talking with your friends and family members. Picture This Find a photo in the newspaper. Write about what you think happened before the photo was taken and what might have happened after. Read the story to see if you were right. ANSWER: Unquestionably! Standards Link: Writing Applications: Students write phrases that describe concepts. Write an ad to sell your favorite book. Make it sound exciting or fun, but don’t give away the ending!