David Wiesner (Author of Flotsam)

David Wiesner鈥檚 Followers (618)

David Wiesner

Born

in Bridgewater, New Jersey, The United States

February 05, 1956

Website

Genre

Children's, Art

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During David Wiesner's formative years, the last images he saw before closing his eyes at night were the books, rockets, elephant heads, clocks, and magnifying glasses that decorated the wallpaper of his room. Perhaps it was this decor which awakened his creativity and gave it the dreamlike, imaginative quality so often found in his work.

As a child growing up in suburban New Jersey, Wiesner re-created his world daily in his imagination. His home and his neighborhood became anything from a faraway planet to a prehistoric jungle. When the everyday play stopped, he would follow his imaginary playmates into the pages of books, wandering among dinosaurs in the World Book Encyclopedia. The images before him generated a love of detail, an admirati During David Wiesner's formative years, the last images he saw before closing his eyes at night were the books, rockets, elephant heads, clocks, and magnifying glasses that decorated the wallpaper of his room. Perhaps it was this decor which awakened his creativity and gave it the dreamlike, imaginative quality so often found in his work.

As a child growing up in suburban New Jersey, Wiesner re-created his world daily in his imagination. His home and his neighborhood became anything from a faraway planet to a prehistoric jungle. When the everyday play stopped, he would follow his imaginary playmates into the pages of books, wandering among dinosaurs in the World Book Encyclopedia. The images before him generated a love of detail, an admiration for the creative process, and a curiosity about the hand behind the drawings.

In time, the young Wiesner began exploring the history of art, delving into the Renaissance at first 鈥� Michelangelo, D眉rer, and da Vinci 鈥� then moving on to such surrealists as Magritte, de Chirico, and Dal铆. As he got older, he would sit, inspired by these masters, at the oak drafting table his father had found for him and would construct new worlds on paper and create wordless comic books, such as Slop the Wonder Pig, and silent movies, like his kung fu vampire film The Saga of Butchula.

Wiesner has always been intrigued by and curious about what comes before and after the captured image. His books somehow convey the sequence of thoughts leading up to and following each picture, and that quality explain why they are frequently described as cinematic.

At the Rhode Island School of Design, Wiesner was able to commit himself to the full-time study of art and to explore further his passion for wordless storytelling. There he met two people who would figure prominently in his life: Tom Sgouros, to whom Tuesday is dedicated, and David Macaulay, to whom The Three Pigs is dedicated. These two men not only taught Wiesner the fundamentals of drawing and painting but also fostered his imaginative spirit and helped him comprehend the world around him. Sgouros's and Macaulay's artistic influences were vital to Wiesner's development into the acclaimed picture-book author he is today.

David Wiesner has illustrated more than twenty award-winning books for young readers. Two of the picture books he both wrote and illustrated became instant classics when they won the prestigious Caldecott Medal: Tuesday in 1992 and The Three Pigs in 2002. Two of his other titles, Sector 7 and Free Fall, are Caldecott Honor Books. An exhibit of Wiesner's original artwork, "Seeing the Story," toured the United States in 2000 and 2001. Among his many honors, Wiesner holds the Japan Picture Book Award for Tuesday, the Prix Sorci猫res (the French equivalent of the Caldecott Medal) for The Three Pigs, and a 2004 IBBY Honour Book nomination for illustration, also for The Three Pigs. Flotsam, his most recent work, was a New York Times bestseller and was recently named winner of the 2007 Caldecott Medal, making Wiesner only the second person in the award鈥檚 long history to have won three times.

Wiesner lives with his wife and their son and daughter in the Philadelphia area, where he continues to create dreamlike and inventive images for books. ...more

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Average rating: 4.12 · 108,036 ratings · 12,485 reviews · 59 distinct works 鈥� Similar authors

	Flotsam 4.24 avg rating — 26,917 ratings — published 2006 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tuesday 4.16 avg rating — 27,284 ratings — published 1991 — 37 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Three Pigs 4.16 avg rating — 20,494 ratings — published 2001 — 35 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Art & Max 4.07 avg rating — 7,197 ratings — published 2010 — 24 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mr. Wuffles! 3.97 avg rating — 7,008 ratings — published 2013 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sector 7 4.21 avg rating — 5,414 ratings — published 1999 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Free Fall 3.94 avg rating — 2,677 ratings — published 1991 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	June 29, 1999 4.11 avg rating — 2,492 ratings — published 1992 — 18 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hurricane 3.77 avg rating — 1,014 ratings — published 1990 — 34 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	I Got It! 3.22 avg rating — 723 ratings — published 2018 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by David Wiesner (?)

“Before they read words, children are reading pictures.”
― David Wiesner, Free Fall

tags: mo-willems, picture-book-winners, picture-books, rosemary-wells, yumi-heo

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Polls

Now that we have a winner, Journey, lets choose an honor award. Which book should receive our first honor award?

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown

17 votes 29.8%

Locomotive by Brian Floca

9 votes 15.8%

The Dark by Lemony Snicket

7 votes 12.3%

Mr. Wuffles! by David Wiesner

6 votes 10.5%

Hank Finds an Egg by Rebecca Dudley

5 votes 8.8%

How to Train a Train by Jason Carter Eaton

4 votes 7.0%

If You Want to See a Whale by Julie Fogliano

4 votes 7.0%

On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne

3 votes 5.3%

The Tortoise & the Hare by Jerry Pinkney

2 votes 3.5%

57 total votes

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