Share on the Picture Books for Older Readers thread: briefly outline your favourite title with one strategy about how you could promote the book in the library or classroom.
The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan
Shaun Tan describes a story in very visual, artistic and interesting terms, about essentially things that we forget, things that are thrown away… things that are lost. This invites readers to think about their every-day lives, and the objects that are present in them. For example, it invites consideration of things that we put in the garage and forget; things that we throw away without a second thought; things that we use once and we never use again. Above all, The Lost Thing motivates us to think about what is important in our lives, and what objects actually serve some purpose, objects that we may buy or want in a fit of desire or interest, but which last a very short amount of time. Therefore, it encourages children and young adults to think about their habits in relation to consumerist practices, what they want, what things they want and why they want them, and what is superficial and what is actually important about wanting material things.
In terms of promotion of this book, a great teaching strategy would be to link it to a campaign to clean up the school or to recycle more, or to think about how general waste influences our throw-away society. It would serve the purpose of discouraging students from buying lots of plastic items for example, or for every special occasion in their lives, such as birthday parties, buying new things, and never using them again. It would be great to have campaigns through the school library, through posters, to recycle, to fix things, not just throw them away, and to be more interested and engaged with the material objects around us, and not just always be looking for the next new thing, to then dispose of perfunctorily. The school library can promote awareness of waste or recycling week, and this would link back to the main themes in this picture book.