It’s been a while since Hannah paraded her contestants around, making promises of Mirette’s hardhitting high-wire fire, Ox-cart man’s intimidating wife, and Sylvester’s pebble with it’s magic powers. Pish posh, I say. The Caldecott is about the fantastical, the mystical, the mysterious, the profound! Not ox and pebbles! I present, the contenders, or should I say the squashers, and the winners!
We’ll start with the 1992 winner Tuesday by David Wiesner. This was Wiesner’s first Caldecott win, but it wouldn’t be his last. Tuesday doesn’t rely on fancy words: this book is almost completely wordless. The beautiful illustrations of Tuesday were the first thing that drew me to Wiesner’s work. Using his brush strokes alone, Wiesner gives me the watercolored tools to mop up Mirette: Frogs. That’s right, frogs. Flying on lily pads. They come in the night, intriguing and terrorizing the characters within this book and amazing the reader. Mirette may be a high-wire show off, but these frogs show her up. Hannah: 0, Emily: 1.
Continuing with this sparse theme, we have my next prize-wining fighter: My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohmann. 
“My friend Rabbit means well. But whatever he does, wherever he goes, trouble follows.” And so begins the tale of an imaginative rabbit who, despite his best efforts, is always in trouble. And while trouble is bad when trying to be good, it’s perfect when trying to beat the competition. Look at this rabbit! He can lift a bear! Take that Ox-Cart Man. We don’t need no cart! Boo yah!
And Hannah, I finish with a 1-2-punch: I give you Flotsam by David 
Wiesner. This was Wiesner’s third Caldecott win and with it he became only 1 of 2 people who have won the award three times (Marcia Brown was the first). Flotsam tells the story of a camera that has been to unimaginable places. With the same beautiful watercolor style as he showed us in Tuesday, Wiesner blows his audience away with breath-taking scenes such as the one below. So which is better: Sylvester’s magic rock, or starfish with whole islands on their backs. Well, dear reader, I’ll let y’all be the judge of that.
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