David Weisner’s picture books are thought-provoking blends of simplicity and creativity. They make us consider different perspectives and different possibilities, even some that are out of this world! My kids love his books because most have few or minimal words and allow them to create their own story from the beautiful and detailed images. Below are our 7 favorite David Weisner books- and it was tough to narrow them down!
Caldecott Medal winner Tuesday has just a few words in the entire book that stamp the day and time- on Wednesday evenings strange things happen in this town. On the first Tuesday, frogs cruise the town on flying lily pads, causing all kinds of confusion. When the sun comes up, the frogs lose their ability to fly, leaving lily pads all over town for the confused humans to puzzle over. Wiesner’s imaginative images allowed my kids to see and understand the hilarious frog adventures. At the end of the book, the second Tuesday, pigs begin to take flight, and readers are left to imagine what sort of trouble the pigs will get into.
I have read Mr. Wuffles countless times since we discovered it because my kids love it so much. In this adventure, Mr. Wuffles, a cat, ignores all of his cat toys until he realizes that amongst them in a tiny alien space ship. The aliens communicate with symbols, so we were able to make up their conversations as we read. Mr. Wuffles sees them and wants to play with them, but he damages the ship. The aliens have to exit the ship to fix it, and save themselves. They form an alliance with the ants and lady bugs who live under a radiator. They work together to repair their ship and fly to safety. I loved that our family had conversations about hieroglyphics (the ants had accurate records of previous encounters with Mr. Wuffles!) and helping each other as we read this one.
My older kid introduced me to June 29, 1999. In this one, Holly Evans launches her school science experiment to determine the impact of the conditions of the ionosphere on the growth of vegetable seedlings. About a month later, gigantic vegetables appear in the sky across the United States. Wiesner’s hilarious descriptions include, “cucumbers circle Kalamazoo. Lima beans loom over Levittown. Artichokes advance on Anchorage…” The accompanying images are amazing- gigantic produce looming over the cities. Readers are excited for Holly’s amazing discovery. Eventually the vegetables fall to earth, and Wiesner humorously explores the impact of Big Vegetable on the nation’s economy. While listening to news coverage of the phenomenon, Holly notes that there are veggies appearing that were not part of her experiment, and wonders where they came from. The story cuts to an alien spaceship which accidentally jettisoned it’s own produce over earth. When the aliens realize what has happened, Holly’s vegetables, which look decidedly tiny for the aliens, appear floating near their ship. My kids love the alien twist at the end, and the alliteration throughout.
The Three Pigs, also a Caldecott Medal winner, is the tale of the three pigs (of The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf) who find themselves able to escape their story- and their fate- to explore other tales. In so doing they make some other fairy tale friends including the Cat from Hey Diddle Diddle and a dragon before heading back to their own story, scaring off the big, bad wolf and making a lovely soup dinner in the third pig’s brick house. We love the amazing images- the pigs even use the pages of the story to create a paper air plane to ride on! The illustration style changes from story to story, and the pigs pop in and out of those styles, too. The creativity and humor of this book are amazing. A must read!
Have you ever wondered how clouds get their shape? Sector 7 explains exactly how- maybe. When the artistic protagonist goes on a field trip to the Observatory at the Empire State Building, they make friends with a cloud who brings them to Sector 7, where clouds get their assignments from a group of engineers. The clouds are displeased with the common shapes they’re given, and the student draws beautiful ocean creatures for them to try. The clouds are thrilled, but the engineers are not, returning the student to the Empire State Building and the clouds to their regular assignments. Just as the student is boarding the bus again, the clouds go rogue and form his ocean shapes across the sky. Wiesner shows the reactions of those on Earth- the student and other humans, fish in the water, and even cats (who look excited and confused). This one has no words, other than the labels on the drawings, and my kids love to create the narrative of this story.
Another Caldecott winner here- in Flotsam, a young kid is playing on the beach when an old, underwater camera appears on the beach. They find a roll of film in it, gets it developed, and is amazed with what they see. There are robot fish, mer-people, and most amazing- a picture of each kid who has found the camera holding a picture of each other kid who has found it, going back quite far in time! The protagonist adds their own picture to the rest, and sends the camera back to see. Wiesner shows readers the camera’s adventure to getting to its next kid. Gorgeous and creative and thought-provoking, this book will accompany us on our next swimming vacation for sure.
Free Fall shows readers (again, no words) how a person’s environment can influence their dreams. The first page is a young person falling asleep and follows them through their dreams. Readers see the blanket transform into a town, into a forest, into a city, and back to a bed when the person wakes. Wiesner’s use of shape and color, and his unique ability to imagine the transformation of one structure into another (a leaf into a swan, the walls of a building into the pages of a map, the spines of books into tree trunks in a forest) inspired us to use our imaginations in our own art this week as well.
If you haven’t checked out David Wiesner’s books, you absolutely should! I plan to keep these around so that my younger kid can narrate her own verbally, and encourage my older kid to write her own version of the stories to accompany the images or add on to them with their own images as well.