The Lost Children: The Boys Who Were Neglected

by Paul Goble

Overview

Paul Goble's The Lost Children is based on Blackfoot Native American myth, this tale movingly reminds us that all children are sacred.

Six orphaned brothers, neglected by their people and taunted by their peers, abandon the earth for the Above World where they become the constellation known as the Pleiades.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780689819995
Publisher:	Aladdin
Publication date:	06/01/1998
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.20(d)
Lexile:	570L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Paul Goble has received wide acclaim for his magnificent books, including Buffalo Woman, Dream Wolf, Her Seven Brothers, and the winner of the 1979 Caldecott Medal, The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses. Commenting on his work in Beyond the Ridge, Horn Book Magazine said, "striking elements synthesize the graphics with the narrative and spiritual aspects of the text." The New York Times Book Review noted that his technique is "a marriage of authentic design and contemporary artistry, and it succeeds beautifully." Paul Goble's most recent book for Bradbury Press, I Sing for the Animals, was called "a lovely, small book that movingly conveys profound belief in the goodness of creation" by Kirkus Reviews, and School Library Journal said it "fits as easily in the hand as Goble's meditations about the natural world do in the heart."

Editorial Reviews

Based on a sacred myth of the Blackfoot Indians, this handsome picture book tells of six brothers sadly neglected by their contemporaries. Orphaned at an early age, clothed in rags and heaped with scorn, the boys ``did not wish to be people any longer.'' They decided to become stars (``we will always be beautiful'') and rose into the night sky to be with Father Sun and Mother Moon--myth has it that they were transformed into the Pleiades. Goble tells this story with earnest simplicity, a gentle cadence to his words imbuing the text with particular significance. His illustrations--dazzling in color, crisp and clean in design--prove typically arresting. Especially noteworthy are his scrupulously depicted tipis; an addendum explains the meaning of their symbols. Cars painted alongside the tipis in the final scene add a potent contemporary touch. Tied in with the message here--the importance of love for others--is a timely, subtle allusion to the plight of the homeless: ``They slept and ate in one place today, and another tomorrow, and they were always hungry. Their only clothes were what people had discarded.'' All ages. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 3-5-- A sacred tale of the Blackfoot, The Lost Children tells of six orphaned brothers, neglected by their people, given grudging charity, taunted and scorned by other children. They are befriended only by the camp dogs. At last the boys, tired of the unkindness around them, go to the Above World, where they become the stars we call the Pleiades. Sun Man punishes the neglectful people with a drought, but he listens to the dogs' plea that it end when the animals, too, suffer. (The dogs become the small stars clustered around the Pleiades.) The retelling is spare and direct, the more affecting for its complete lack of sentimentality. There is an extensive list of sources and notes on both the story and on tipi-painting. These notes help readers to understand Blackfoot artistry and values, and add meaning to Goble's depiction. Unchanging in the bright, bold geometry of his instantly recognizable style, Goble's work here, as in the past, is notable both for its graphic design and for the narrative it adorns. --Patricia Dooley, University of Washington, Seattle

School Library Journal