The fifth in a series of ten lectures on David Wiesner: “The Secrets of the Sea”—Imagination cannot exist without a persistent curiosity.

Last time we talked about David Wies­ner’s fan­ta­sy epic, *Tues­day*.This time, let’s talk about the mas­ter­piece of this word­less book mas­ter, “The Secret of the Sea”.

This book won the Calde­cott Medal in 2007, mark­ing David Wies­ner’s third Calde­cott Medal. Win­ning three medals is extreme­ly rare; the judges must have felt the book was so excep­tion­al, almost per­fect, that they had to award it anoth­er medal. His first two were *Tues­day* (1992) and *The Three Lit­tle Pigs* (2002). *The Three Lit­tle Pigs* had a con­sid­er­able amount of text, and *Tues­day* also had some text, mak­ing them qua­si-word­less books. *The Secret of the Sea*, how­ev­er, is a com­plete­ly word­less book. David Wies­ner had pre­vi­ous­ly cre­at­ed two oth­er word­less books of this type: *Dream Flight* and *Dream Fac­to­ry No. 7*, both of which only won the Calde­cott Hon­or. With this third tru­ly word­less book, *The Secret of the Sea*, he reached an impec­ca­ble peak.

David Wies­ner poured his heart and soul into cre­at­ing this book, spend­ing five years illus­trat­ing all 48 pages from cov­er to back cov­er. So, what sto­ry does this book tell?

Before intro­duc­ing this sto­ry of the word­less book, I would like to empha­size three points:

First, this kind of word­less book is actu­al­ly impos­si­ble to tell.I remem­ber once a few of us sto­ry­tellers were at the Bei­jing Con­cert Hall, telling sto­ries to hun­dreds of chil­dren with music play­ing. That time, Teacher Bird Xiang Hua told the chil­dren about “The Secret of the Sea” for about half an hour. He and the chil­dren were very hap­py, but to be hon­est, he only talked about a small part of the book.

So remem­berSec­ond­ly, word­less books are par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­able for repeat­ed read­ing togeth­er.Per­haps the best approach is for adults and chil­dren, or chil­dren in groups, to dis­cov­er sto­ries from books, find details in the illus­tra­tions, and exchange ideas, remind­ing and inspir­ing each oth­er.

And alsoThird­ly, this type of book inspires a love of explo­ration.What makes it fun is that no mat­ter how many times you watch it, you can always dis­cov­er some­thing new, and there might be some­thing in the sto­ry that makes you want to explore it fur­ther.

Let’s take this book, *The Secrets of the Sea*, as an exam­ple. If we were to sum­ma­rize it sim­ply, we could use four key­words: obser­va­tion, awe, rec­ol­lec­tion, and long­ing. Obser­va­tion, awe, rec­ol­lec­tion, and longing—I’ve tried to under­stand the sto­ry’s thread from these four per­spec­tives.

First comes the obser­va­tion. Right in the cen­ter of the cov­er is a large red fish eye. Turn­ing to the title page, the first image on the inside page is anoth­er large eye—this time, a boy’s eye. On the next page, we see the boy lying on the beach, using a mag­ni­fy­ing glass to observe a sand crab. That tiny crea­ture, which looks like an insect, is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly called a cica­da crab. The name is a bit odd, com­bin­ing “mouse,” “cica­da,” and “crab”—and the cica­da being observed is also star­ing at us with wide eyes—this sto­ry invites the read­er to pay atten­tion from the very begin­ning; even if you don’t look at it, it will look at you!

Judg­ing from the series of paint­ings, the sto­ry is about a beach where a boy is clear­ly on vaca­tion. While oth­ers are swim­ming, play­ing in the sand, and build­ing sand­cas­tles, this boy seems to be con­duct­ing research. Besides a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, he also has a tele­scope and a micro­scope near­by, and to pre­vent the sand from dam­ag­ing the micro­scope, he pro­fes­sion­al­ly cov­ers it with a sealed plas­tic bag. This def­i­nite­ly has the air of an ama­teur sci­en­tist.

Next, he explored a beach clos­er to the sea. While lying on the ground study­ing a pass­ing crab, a wave washed ashore and knocked him to the ground. When the wave reced­ed, he found an old-fash­ioned, mechan­i­cal­ly con­trolled cam­era. This cam­era was quite remark­able; it looked like an antique, but it was a very advanced under­wa­ter cam­era. The sign on it read “Melville.” Do you know what that means? Actu­al­ly, there’s no cam­era brand with that name. It was made up by David Wies­ner. Melville was one of the great­est Amer­i­can nov­el­ists of the 19th cen­tu­ry, best known for *Moby-Dick*, a thrilling sto­ry about whal­ing at sea. This means the cam­era has a very impres­sive his­to­ry, right?

After find­ing the cam­era, the boy first asked around the beach, “Who lost this cam­era? Who owns it?” Of course, no one claimed it. The boy opened the back cov­er and found film inside. That made things eas­i­er! He could just take it to a pho­to stu­dio, get the film devel­oped, and find out who owned the cam­era. The boy quick­ly ran to the pho­to stu­dio, had the pho­tos devel­oped, and when he received them, oh my god, he was com­plete­ly shocked!

This leads to the sec­ond key word: Amaz­ing!Or per­haps it was sim­ply aston­ish­ment. What did he see? An absolute­ly mag­i­cal under­wa­ter world: a group of swim­ming red fish, among which were clear­ly wind-up robot­ic fish; a liv­ing room for a group of octo­pus­es, com­plete with sofas and lamps lit by elec­tric fish; a sea tur­tle car­ry­ing a small city on its back, and a puffer­fish inflat­ing into a hot air bal­loon and soar­ing into the sky; aliens div­ing to the bot­tom of the sea, with sea­hors­es stand­ing upright beside them; and giant starfish walk­ing like coral islands, with enor­mous sperm whales appear­ing as tiny fish beneath their feet… and so on and so forth. The under­wa­ter pho­tographs con­tain so many details that read­ers need to dis­cov­er them through repeat­ed read­ings.

In short, what amazed the boy most was the last pho­to­graph. It depict­ed peo­ple: a girl who appeared to be from anoth­er con­ti­nent, hold­ing a pho­to­graph; a boy of some eth­nic­i­ty, also hold­ing a pho­to­graph; and a blond boy hold­ing a pho­to­graph. The pho­tographs pro­gressed in lay­ers, get­ting small­er and small­er. The boy had to use a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, and then, remem­ber, he even had a micro­scope with him, mag­ni­fy­ing each one, lev­el by lev­el, up to 70x. Final­ly, the only clear­ly vis­i­ble image of the boy was a black and white pho­to­graph, dressed in very old clothes, with old build­ings and peo­ple from a bygone era in the background—it looked at least a hun­dred years ago, per­haps even back to Melville’s 19th cen­tu­ry. It turned out that this under­wa­ter cam­era had drift­ed ashore from that era, pass­ing through the hands of many chil­dren, and the pho­tographs cap­tured a jour­ney across time.Memories—this is the third key­word.

Look­ing at the pho­tos that held count­less mem­o­ries, the boy felt as if he were in anoth­er world. He sat blankly on the beach, star­ing at them. We can see that most of the tourists had left; it was prob­a­bly dusk. The boy des­per­ate­ly want­ed to do some­thing; he longed to join this jour­ney through time. This is the fourth key phrase. So, he took a self­ie in front of the Melville cam­era, hold­ing up the last pho­to. How do you take a self­ie with a robot­ic arm con­trol­ling a cam­era? Imag­ine, this is a tech whiz; he has a trick up his sleeve. After he took the pho­to, guess what? He picked up the cam­era and, like a sling­shot, tossed it far into the sea. The cam­era then embarked on a new under­wa­ter adven­ture.

I won’t go into the details of the adven­tures that fol­lowed, but I’ll give you a lit­tle hint: they fore­shad­owed at least two books. One was his lat­er graph­ic nov­el, *The Lit­tle Mer­maid*, and the oth­er was actu­al­ly an e‑book, an app called SPOT. But that’s a sto­ry for anoth­er time. At the end of the sto­ry, the cam­era will nat­u­ral­ly meet a sim­i­lar­ly curi­ous child on a beach in the future. And so the mag­i­cal tale con­tin­ues.

Okay, I’ve giv­en a very brief overview of the sto­ry­line of “The Secret of the Sea.” As always, to tru­ly enjoy this book, you have to read it slow­ly on your own, and it’s best to think about it togeth­er with your child.

So why did David Wies­ner spend five years illus­trat­ing this mag­i­cal sto­ry? The book is said to be 48 pages long from cov­er to back cov­er, but in real­i­ty, it fea­tures at least 90 large and small illus­tra­tions. Where did this painstak­ing­ly drawn sto­ry come from? Look at the ded­i­ca­tion page: the author ded­i­cates it “to my fam­i­ly and all those days by the sea.” It turns out that when David Wies­ner was a child, until he was about 14, his fam­i­ly would spend about two weeks every sum­mer vaca­tion­ing at the beach. The boy in the book is rough­ly a reflec­tion of David as a child.

Anoth­er inci­dent deeply moved David. When he was nine, he and a friend acci­den­tal­ly unearthed a met­al bull in the riverbed of a creek near their home. It was slight­ly dam­aged but most­ly intact. This bull sparked a lot of imag­i­na­tion in the two boys. Since David was a lit­tle old­er, he may have found it first, so he tem­porar­i­ly kept it safe. Almost thir­ty years lat­er, the friend met David again and brought up the bull, sug­gest­ing it was his turn to keep it. David recount­ed how the bull had dis­ap­peared in an apart­ment fire, leav­ing the two friends deeply sad­dened. David felt that this expe­ri­ence of remem­ber­ing some­thing was tru­ly spe­cial, and thus, in *The Secret of the Sea*, the under­wa­ter cam­era was passed around like a relay. Every child who hap­pens to get their hands on this cam­era will like­ly imag­ine the pos­si­ble mag­i­cal expe­ri­ences, and the cam­era can cap­ture the evi­dence.

Regard­ing the pro­found influ­ence of this cre­ative approach and method, we must men­tion David Wies­ner’s fas­ci­na­tion with sci­ence fic­tion films. He watched his favorite film, *2001: A Space Odyssey*, at least 25 times. Although he did­n’t think much about the film when he was draw­ing *The Secret of the Sea*, it was­n’t until the cov­er was print­ed that David real­ized the large eye of the red fish on the cov­er was actu­al­ly the web­cam of the super­com­put­er in *2001: A Space Odyssey*.

That film rais­es a very inter­est­ing ques­tion: is the end­less devel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fi­cial or detri­men­tal to human­i­ty? Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment is cer­tain­ly cool, but can’t the super­com­put­er invent­ed by humans also destroy human­i­ty? David Wies­ner seems to be show­ing chil­dren this pos­si­bil­i­ty: to organ­i­cal­ly inte­grate the super­pow­ers of machines with human intel­li­gence and emo­tion­al abil­i­ties, and to use the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy to con­nect the past, present, and future. This cool artist is most con­cerned with con­nec­tion itself; he longs to con­nect with his own child­hood and, in doing so, con­nect with chil­dren of the present and future.

That’s all for this book for now. We’ll talk about the next one in the next episode.