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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
(Source: The Lost Thing website)
Adaptations
- The Lost Thing 2004 single work drama children's
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form
y
The Lost Thing ( dir. Andrew Ruhemann et. al. )agent Melbourne : Passion Pictures Australia , 2010 Z1700980 2010 single work film/TV fantasy
'A boy discovers a bizarre looking creature while out collecting bottle tops at the beach. Realising it is lost, he tries to find out who owns it or where it belongs, but is met with indifference from everyone else, who barely notice its presence, each unwilling to entertain this uninvited interruption to their day to day lives. For reasons he does not explain, the boy empathises with the creature, and sets out to find a "place' for it".'
Source: The Lost Thing website, http://www.thelostthing.com/
Sighted: 21/06/2010
Reading Australia
This work has Reading Australia teaching resources.
Unit Suitable For
AC: Year 7/8 (NSW Stage 4)
Themes
art, belonging, bureaucracy, conformity, creativity, dystopia, friendship, individuality, modern society, Sustainability, utopia
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Information and communication technology, Intercultural understanding, Literacy, Personal and social
Notes
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Included in the 2001 White Ravens Catalogue compiled by the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany. Special mention.
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This is affiliated with Dr Laurel Cohn's Picture Book Diet because it contains representations of food and/or food practices.
Food depiction - Incidental
Food types - Discretionary foods
- High fat foods
- High salt foods
- Processed foods
Food practices - Eating in - snack
Gender n/a Signage n/a Positive/negative value n/a Food as sense of place - Domestic
- Normalising the fantastical
Setting - Domestic interior
- Urban landscape
Food as social cohesion n/a Food as cultural identity n/a Food as character identity n/a Food as language n/a
Affiliation Notes
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This work is affiliated with the AustLit subset Asian-Australian Children's Literature and Publishing because it has been translated into Korean, Chinese and Japanese.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille, sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Art, Adaptation, and the Antipodean in Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: More Words about Pictures Current Research on Picturebooks and Visual/Verbal Texts for Young People 2017; (p. 44-62)'Shaun Tan is an eminent figure of Australian children's literature in the twenty-first century. Tan's international success has been marked commercially by the proliferation of international editions and translations of his picture books and critically by the proliferation of awards, including an Academy Award for the animated short film adaptation of The Lost Thing, and in 2011 the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which is given for sustained aesthetic and humanist achievement in children's literature. In 1959, a figurative expressionist group calling themselves The Antipodeans held an exhibition in Melbourne, the catalogue for which saw the first publication of "The Antipodean Manifesto". This section of the Manifesto was contributed by John Brack, and Brack's identity as a figurative expressionist and as an artist of adaptation mark his work in particular as significant for a full understanding of The Lost Thing.'
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Using Shaun Tan's Work to Foster Multiliteracies in 21st-Century Classrooms
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Reading Teacher , October vol. 69 no. 2 2015; (p. 207-217) 'This paper explores work in multimodality and design as it relates to 21st century multiliteracies. After outlining the concept of a multiliteracies pedagogy, this paper describes multimodality and multimodal texts. Moving from the theoretical to the practical, this paper primarily explores selected multimodal works of Shaun Tan and the opportunities they open to bring a multiliteracies pedagogy to classrooms. It provides approachable pedagogical strategies that can be successful in a variety of classrooms. We conclude that Tan's work ultimately acts as an accessible resource for educators striving to employ multiliteracies practices and bring multimodal texts into their classrooms.' (Publication abstract) -
Music, Multiliteracies and Multimodality : Exploring the Book and Movie Versions of Shaun Tan's 'The Lost Thing'
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Journal of Language and Literacy , February vol. 37 no. 1 2014; (p. 3-20)Well-known stories in established and contemporary literature for children are increasingly becoming available in various moving image media versions as well as in traditional book formats. Classroom exploration of the same story in different narrative formats has addressed the impact on meaning-making of similarities and differences in language and image across versions. What has received very little attention however, is the role of music in conjunction with image and language in the construction of the potentially different interpretive possibilities of the multiple versions of ostensibly the same story. This paper discusses the nature and role of music, images and language in the book and movie versions of Shaun Tan’s story of The Lost Thing, drawing attention to the role of music in highlighting key interpretive differences deriving from subtle variation in the use of image and language in the two story versions. Implications for students’ multimodal text creation and interpretation in the context of the new Australian Curriculum: English are briefly noted. [Author's abstract]
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Investigating Point of View in Picture Books and Animated Movie Adaptations
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Picture Books and Beyond 2014; (p. 92-107)Today’s children frequently experience multiple versions of literary narratives as more and more picture books appear also as animated movies and i-pad/tablet apps. In some cases the animated versions are very different from the books but in other cases the language and the visual character representations maintain the essential features of the book versions. Works such as these afford the opportunity to appreciate how quite subtle changes in depiction from static to moving image can effect significant shifts in the interpretive possibilities. This kind of interpretive context is addressed directly in the Australian Curriculum: English, which indicates, for example, that year four and five students should be examining variation in visual point view and its impact on audiences. This chapter firstly examines the knowledge about the meaning-making resources of still and moving images that is necessary to negotiate these kinds of curriculum expectations. This is illustrated through a comparative analysis of corresponding segments of three well-known picture books.
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Disability and Belonging in Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Jeunesse : Young People, Texts, Culture , Winter vol. 6 no. 2 2014;'This essay looks at images of disability in Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing. The character of the lost thing, lost inside a world that clearly will not let it belong, represents the unrepresentable, while the boy narrator displays subtle depictions of cognitive difference. The lost thing’s body is incomprehensible for the very reason that it is so unlike the bodies of others. Although it may be tempting to read the boy narrator as dispassionate or as too emotionally detached because of his involvement with this uniform world, the protagonist gladly assists his new friend. As a different kind of thinker, the boy also does not quite fit in his world, even as he is not entirely separate from it.'
Source: Abstract.
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[Review] The Lost Thing
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , November vol. 44 no. 4 2000; (p. 21)
— Review of The Lost Thing 2000 single work picture book -
[Review] The Lost Thing
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: Magpies : Talking About Books for Children , September vol. 15 no. 4 2000; (p. 30-31)
— Review of The Lost Thing 2000 single work picture book -
[Review] The Lost Thing
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: Fiction Focus : New Titles for Teenagers , vol. 14 no. 3 2000; (p. 37)
— Review of The Lost Thing 2000 single work picture book -
Surreal Humour
2000
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 225 2000; (p. 58-59)
— Review of The Lost Thing 2000 single work picture book ; Inside Mary Elizabeth's House 2000 single work picture book ; Pannikin and Pinta 2000 single work picture book ; Snow Bear 2000 single work picture book -
Top Reads for Kids
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 11 August 2001; (p. 6)
— Review of The Singing Hat 2000 single work picture book ; A is for Aunty 2000 single work picture book ; Fox 2000 single work picture book ; Faust's Party 2000 single work picture book ; Rain Dance 2000 single work picture book ; The Lost Thing 2000 single work picture book -
The Children's Book Council of Australia Annual Awards 2001
2001
single work
column
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , August vol. 45 no. 3 2001; (p. 2-12) -
Images of Refuge with Deep Imprint
2006
single work
column
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 28 - 29 October 2006; (p. 34) -
Trash Aesthetics and Utopian Memory: The Tip at the End of the Street and The Lost Thing
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Bookbird , vol. 43 no. 1 2005; (p. 28-34) -
Dogboys and Lost Things, or, Anchoring a Floating Signifier : Race and Critical Multiculturalism
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Ariel , October vol. 37 no. 4 2006; (p. 1-20) Australian Made : A Multicultural Reader 2010; (p. 97-118) 'In her 2004 book on multiculturalism, Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms, Sneja Gunew persistently refers to the term multiculturalism as a floating signifier. (1) While this notion of a floating signifier is helpful because it acknowledges different ways in which multiculturalism functions in specific contexts, it may be unhelpful when it floats so much as to lose any signification. While I identify myself as a postmodernist and, therefore, regularly resist universalist terminology, I find myself in a peculiar position of wanting to put limits on the term multiculturalism. (2) If multiculturalism can mean anything, then why is it important to analyze children's literature through the lens of multiculturalism, I wonder.' - Author's abstract -
Desiring Perception : Finding Utopian Impulses in Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , December vol. 15 no. 2 2005; (p. 58-66) In this paper, Dudek argues that uptopian impulses can be found within The Lost Thing via the characters of the child, the artist, and the hybrid custodian, all of whom act as figures of resistance and hope in a dystopian world ruled by rigid and repetitive empirical discourses.
Awards
- 2001 winner Ditmar Awards — Best Artwork
- 2001 joint honour book CBCA Book of the Year Awards — Picture Book of the Year
- 2000 joint winner Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction — Peter McNamara Convenors' Award
- 2000 shortlisted Western Australian Premier's Book Awards — Young Adults
- 2000 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Books
- Coast,