The Lost Children Book

I really liked this book. It wasn't without flaws, but I definitely recommend! Giving this middle grade a solid 4 stars!

The Lost Children starts off a bit slow. It's about a girl named Josephine who lives in a town where everyone has to wear gloves. Her father owns a glove factory and MAKES everyone in the town wear gloves too. People hate him and the kids hate Josephine because of the gloves. Now this beginning sounds super dopey, but it comes back around eventually.

One day Josephine is in her backyard planting a tomato for a class project when she sees a small boy standing in her backyard. He looked dirty and lost and had no shoes! Josephine felt bad for the boy and decided to invite him inside her house for some food. This is the beginning of a weird friendship. The boy comes again the next day and this time Josephine invites him up to her room. He seemed so tired. She hears her father come home and rushes downstairs to meet him. When she gets back to her room the boy is gone. She asked him where he had come from earlier in the day and he pointed toward the shed. She heads toward the shed. While inside the shed looking for the boy, she trips and finds her self somewhere else. Definitely not her shed. She is confused and frightened. It turns out when she tripped she fell into a different world. The boy is from this world. His name is Fargus and he is an orphan.

I read this book to my boys, a chapter a night. It was slow going. Each chapter is around 3 to 4 pages. I should have read a few chapters a night, but we were reading 3 different books ;) I think because we read the book so slowly that the beginning seemed to take forever to get to some action. This isn't a swashbuckling action packed story. It's a slow burn adventure with three kids as the main characters, all on a journey. It's like a mix of Wizard of Oz and Narnia. Each kid needs something and like Dorothy, all Josephine wants is to find her way home. What she finds on her journey is so much more. She found out that she was strong, brave, tough and fearless. She found true friends.

There is a twist at the end that definitely caught me off guard and of course like a sap I got choked up and teary eyed. My 13 year old really enjoyed this one and wanted to continue talking to me about it. His critique is that some of the plot points were a little too convenient and didn't make any sense. He wished the book was either longer or had a sequel so that some of the "magic" could have been fleshed out more. I love it. Teaching the boy right :D

If you like middle grade or your kids do, I'd definitely pick this one up.