Lost Things

Lost Things is a thoughtful book about losing something; sometimes they are missed, sometimes they are not, sometimes they are found and sometimes they are not. In this story, the simple but beautiful images add important visual cues for early readers to follow and discover what happens to the lost items.

A squirrel finds an acorn, and a dog chases the squirrel who loses its acorn. The dog loses his stick, and his owner loses her hair ribbon and the dog. A bird finds the ribbon, adding it to its nest while a little boy stops to observe the bird and drops his teddy bear. The teddy bear is picked up and put in a lost and found box by a cyclist who later drops her pencil. A florist picks up the pencil and repurposes it. The florist sells flowers to a little girl who loses her ball, and the dog owner uses the found squeaky ball to find her dog. Don’t worry – the squirrel found his acorn too!

The chain of events links the lost things together, showing readers that sometimes losing something isn’t always as frustrating as it may initially seem to be. For a young child, losing something can be emotional and stressful, and this book is a great way to imagine and explore how lost things might be useful to someone else. Readers can visualize how their lost item might have an ‘adventure’. It may be in a lost and found. Readers may even remember something they had found and imagine where it came from. Lost Things is a lovely picture book, one that encourages all readers to wonder about the lost things!

For the artwork in Lost Things, Carey Sookocheff uses a muted colour palette with pops of red for the lost items, adding incredible visual storytelling cues. Sookocheff created the images traditionally using acrylic gouache and drawing pencil. An adorable addition, the illustrations begin the story on the title page. Though Lost Things tells a simple story using few words, the images add volumes. This is a fun part of the book, perhaps not noticeable the first time it is read, but something new to discover later.