Richie’s Picks: FINDING LOST
Richie Partington
Richie’s Picks: FINDING LOST by Holly Goldberg Sloan, Penguin Random House/Rocky Pond, October 2025, 208p., ISBN: 978-0-593-53025-2
“Ch-ch-changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-changes
(Where's your shame, you've left us up to our necks in it)
Time may change me
But you can't trace time”
– David Bowie, “Changes” (1971)
“5.8 million dogs and cats entered shelters and rescues in 2024.”
– ASPCA
“I go to Siuslaw Middle School.
It’s part of the Siuslaw School District in the coastal town of Florence, Oregon: Population 9,577. The Siuslaw were one of the tribes of the indigenous Siletz people who were the first to settle this area. All the schools here have a Viking as their mascot.
There were no Vikings in the state of Oregon.
But ‘cultural contradictions are part of life.’
I didn’t come up with that. Dad did when I asked him about the Viking thing. One of the most famous Vikings was named Ivar the Boneless. He was a choice in last year’s ‘Famous People to Learn About’ project. After I heard the name, I wasn’t interested in researching the guy. I was hoping for Jane Addams, who was a ‘Pioneer for Social Change,’ and won the Nobel Peace Prize. But Riley Moshofsky was given Jane Addams. She was happy because her great-grandma was named Jane. I got Albert Einstein. I didn’t pick him; he was assigned to me. I did a good job of telling the class about one of the most influential scientists to live. The quote from Mr. Einstein that I like best is: ‘I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.’
I’m not sure I’m passionately curious, but I do have a lot of questions about things.”
I suspect that there’ll be a segment of the parental population who will not be happy about Holly Goldberg Sloan’s FINDING LOST. I am referring to moms and dads who are going to be dealing with their children’s incessant begging to adopt a dog like Lost, the petite, scene-stealing, old stray-on-the-street mutt with bad breath who stars in this heartwarming tale about an Oregon middle schooler facing big changes.
FINDING LOST is told in the first-person by Cordy (Cordilia) Jenkins, a girl whose father–a commercial fisherman–perished off the coast in a boating mishap two-plus years earlier. Times have been tough for Cordy since The Accident, despite loving and supportive grownups in their small town at the mouth of the Siuslaw River. She encounters Lost on her way home from school one day, and decides she’s gotta take him home with her.
It is her little brother Geno who discovers the brochure for the once-a-month free animal clinic in town. Their mom, who had to quit nursing school, move the kids into a converted old boathouse, and become a waitress, after her husband’s demise, is persuaded to let Cordy take a day off of school to attend the clinic to check on the dog’s health and breath. This soon leads to Mom meeting the super-good-guy veterinarian who examines Lost and goes all-out to resolve the dog’s medical problem without it costing the family money they don’t have.
Cordy is angry and suspicious when Mom and Taj (the vet) seem to hit it off. FINDING LOST is not as much about the dog as it is a coming-of-age tale about Cordy coming to terms with change (and more change) in their lives.
But the memorable little dog at the epicenter of those changes totally rocks, and I guarantee you that there’ll be a few less dogs in shelters after elementary- and middle-school readers discover this gem of a tale.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com