All the Weird, Lost Things Have Meaning, a guest post by Shawn K. Stout
I was a weird kid.
When I was about 8 years old, I made my mom a Mother’s Day present. I found an old Easter basket in our basement and glued a baby picture of my older sister, my older brother, and me to the front. I also cut off a chunk of my hair, tied it with a red ribbon, and glued it to the basket under my picture, along with a baby tooth that had fallen out sometime before and had been accidentally left behind by the Tooth Fairy. (There were a lot of my teeth that the Tooth Fairy had either forgotten to take or didn’t want, so I kept them in a small heart-shaped box. I still have them all. Is that weird?) Anyway, I didn’t think it was too much to ask for my brother and sister to donate some of their own hair and teeth for the basket. I mean, after all, it was for our mother. On Mother’s Day.
But they told me no.
And then they told me I was weird.
I also had a thing about things. That is, I attached meaning to inanimate objects. For example, I thought certain things like a coin purse I bought as a souvenir from Hershey Park might bring me bad luck. So, I never used it. And I believed that a necklace I wore every day would make good things happen.
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Although it’s hard to pinpoint a single event or moment or object that inspires a book, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that my newest middle grade novel, Anatomy of Lost Things, came out of the weird kid I was.
Anatomy of Lost Things is a story about three middle schoolers—Tildy, Leon, and Nell—whose lives intersect as they try to recover the things they’ve lost.
Tildy Gubbers has lost trust in her mama after she left the family without so much as a phone call or note. Leon Monteforte is afraid he’s losing his grieving grandmother to the Depths of Despair after the sudden death of his grandfather. And Nell Evetts McDonough has lost her house in a Florida hurricane, and she tries to convince her mom to return home so they can rebuild their life.
Interspersed in the book are “histories” of objects that Tildy, Leon, and Nell become attached to. Tildy’s amber necklace that her mama gave her a few weeks before she left. The damaged brass candlestick that Leon acquired from Tildy’s father’s auction house that he uses to contact the spirit of his dead grandfather. The old British army bugle that Nell wears around her neck, which had been passed down in her family for generations.
Each one of these objects—the necklace, the candlestick, the bugle—has significant meaning for the characters. Tildy, Leon, and Nell have hung their hopes on these “things,” and they become a central part in how these three middle schoolers begin to recover from what they’ve lost.
Obviously, things are important to us. Some reports have suggested that the average American household owns approximately 300,000 items. So, it’s really no wonder we assign meaning to many of them.
Humans create meaning. Sky Marsen, author of the paper “The Role of Meaning in Human Thinking,” writes that it’s a fundamental trait of humans to attach meaning to objects they perceive in the world. “Classifying an object according to selected criteria, attaching value to it, and judging its aesthetic appeal, are all mental operations that, in one way or another, give meaning to the phenomenal world.”
Maybe it’s our way of trying to make sense of the world around us—to explain the unexplainable. Or, maybe it’s because, fundamentally, humans are storytellers. Maybe we assign meaning to some of the things in our lives so that they become more than just a necklace or a candlestick or a bugle—they become information and experiences to share, an emotional connection with others and ourselves.
They become a story.
Here’s an excerpt from the book that shows how Tildy thinks about the necklace. The story Tildy tells herself to make sense of why her mama left.
Her mama had given Tildy the necklace a couple of weeks before she left.
But the amber teardrop was big and noticeable, in a showy, look-there’s-a-giant-hunk-of-golden-rock-around-my-neck sort of way. Plus, the thing thwacked against her chest when she jumped or ran or moved at all, really. Like a door knocker thwacking against her heart, which didn’t feel too good, if she was being honest.
So Tildy stopped wearing it.
And then her mama left.
Maybe one thing didn’t have anything to do with the other, but if she had worn the necklace all the time, maybe her mama wouldn’t have wanted to leave.
Maybe the necklace would’ve been one reason to stay.
Maybe.
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Without any meaning attached to the necklace, it is merely a necklace. Nothing more. But by tying it to the reason Tildy’s mama might stay with her family, the necklace becomes so much more. It becomes imbued with emotion, connection. Story.
So maybe 8-year-old me wasn’t as weird as my brother and sister said I was. Maybe by assigning meaning to things I was just being human.
Maybe I was just being a storyteller.
Meet the author
Shawn K. Stout is the author of several books for young readers, including The Impossible Destiny of Cutie Grackle and A Tiny Piece of Sky , which was a Bank Street Best Book. Shawn holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Maryland with her family. Visit her at shawnkstout.com.
Insta: @shawnkstout
X: @shawnkstout
About Anatomy of Lost Things
A laugh-through-your-tears middle grade novel about what it’s like to lose something precious. For fans of the Three Rancheros series by Kate DiCamillo.
A necklace. A bugle. A lion statue. What do they have to do with each other? Absolutely nothing unless you’re Tildy, Leon, or Nell. These items matter an awful lot to them. Not because of what they are, but what—and who—they represent.
Anatomy of Lost Things shares the crisscrossing stories of Tildy, Leon, and Nell, of the impossible losses they’ve each recently faced, and the unexpected histories of their prized objects. Written with heartbreaking honesty and humor, this novelunfolds in the tender space that exists between staggering loss and the start of recovery, and it finds plenty of hope and laughter waiting there.
ISBN-13: 9781682635872
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication date: 06/18/2024
Age Range: 8 – 12 Years
Filed under: Guest Post
About Amanda MacGregor
Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on Twitter @CiteSomething.
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