Reading level: 510L
Interest level: Grades 1 - 3
Brilliantly illustrated in that
steampunk style of sepia sci-fi, “The Lost Thing” tells the story of a “thing,”
a spaceship-meets cthulhu creature, which our bottle top collecting hero
discovers on the beach. The vagueness of the language in the title and the text
draws in the reader (“So I’ll just tell you about the time I found that lost
thing”) – we are definitely curious from the title page onward. What is it? Why
is it lost? Where is it from? The illustrations, all crowded together
comic-style with a lot of small details in already small panels laid over
layered science journal clippings and diagrams, increases the readers sense of
confusion and curiosity. In contrast, the protagonist deals with the mystery
creature in a very simple, straightforward manner, following the trajectory of
many “lost pet” style stories before it: he plays with it, asks people in the
area if the thing belongs to them, and eventually takes it home. This reminds
me of a more sophisticated and more grown up “Space Case.” In fact, there are a
lot of “adult” elements: A cheeky “Hitchhiker’s Guide” reference (“DON’T
PANIC”), a government department with the motto “sweepus underum
carpetae,” a sign on a building that reads, “TODAY IS THE TOMORROW YOU WERE
PROMISED YESTERDAY” – the title to a 2001 electronica album. A janitor with a
hidden-from-our-hero’s view tail directs him away from the "Department of Odds
and Ends” and gives the duo a mysterious card, which will lead them to a better
place for a Lost Thing. The new location, the building with the "promised
tomorrow" inscription, holds a bizarre bazaar of aliens, robots and other
oddities. The thing happily stays.
“I still think about that lost thing form time to time. Especially when I see something out of the corner of my eye that doesn’t quite fit. You know, something with a weird, sad, lost sort of look.”I think the Lost Thing is supposed to operate as a metaphor for the misfit, perennially weird, sad, and lost, except with their “own kind.” Interestingly, the book draws a distinction between places that “authority” creates for the odd, and the places they create for themselves.
