'The lost thing' By Shaun Tan

The Lost Thing, first published in 2000, is both simple and complex - depending upon how the reader chooses to interpret it. Characteristic of Tan’s literature, the story is strangely familiar and yet completely bizarre. When a young boy discovers a lost “animal” whilst collecting bottle tops on the beach he is compelled to find out who owns it or where it belongs. As the boy attempts to place this huge tentecaled monster, which is not quite animal or machine, the reader is taken on a whimsical guided tour through the, un-coincidently, grey, industrial and unfriendly society in which the boy lives.

The text’s casual and dry first person narration give little away. “That’s the story,” the boy tells us at the end. “Not especially profound, I know, but I never said that it was. And don’t ask me what the moral is.” (Tan, 2000) The reader is left to discover meaning, and in the absence of explanation one cannot help but ask questions. Why are the colours limited to industrial greys and browns? What is that strange place glimpsed through a doorway at the end of an anonymous alley? Is this the future of the present? Why doesn’t anybody notice the lost thing? Why are all the citizens so unhappy? It is Tan’s ability to provoke the readers’ curiosity which makes his works valuable resources when attempting to develop critical, visual and deep literacy skills within students.

Under the strand Literacy, Sub-strand Interpreting, Analysing and Evaluating, the Australian Curriculum requires year six students to “Analyse how text structures and language features work together to meet the purpose of a text” (ACARA, 2012). Working with The Lost Thing, students could question how and why the young boy’s narration has been constructed to give the impression of disinterest and nonchalance. Students could be asked ‘What is the purpose of this text?’ and encouraged to give reasons to support their response.  The teacher may choose to read the text aloud without showing the illustrations to emphasise the relationship between visual and textual literacy within the book.

 Shaun Tan redefines the typical audience parameters of picture books, no longer are they simply the literature of children, but complex and layered narratives which readers, of all ages and literacy-levels, can get as much or as little of as they wish from. Tan supports his point by suggesting that;

“Simplicity certainly does not exclude sophistication or complexity; we inherently know that the truth is otherwise. “Art,” as Einstein reminds us, “is the expression of the most profound thoughts in the simplest way.””(cited in Macintyre, 2002, p.46)