All the Lost Things

PreS-Gr 2—After discovering a mysterious old woman in a manhole and her boxes of precious lost items, young Olive carefully selects something for each member of her family: a sense of humor for her teenage sister, a memory for her grandfather, and eyesight for her own aging father. To fill her last jar, Olive selects hope, which she then disperses all over her city from atop the highest hill so that "anyone who may have lost it…might find it once again." In the end, the once-bleak and dreary city becomes bright and beautiful and full of hope and positivity. This author's debut picture book may be a little heavy on the message and even hard to follow in the beginning, but the illustrations help to carry the plot and make the book a pleasurable experience. Canby starts with a bright and colorful Olive amid the dark, black-and-white city and ends her story with cheerful colors everywhere.