Lost and Found
Illustrator: 
Malik Sajad Rasool
age group: 
9+ yrs
Number of pages: 
24
Publisher: 
National Book Trust
Themes:
partition friendship
Genre:
picture book, realistic fiction
 

War divides whilst love joins hearts is the moral of this touching story. Four friends, Sangeeta, Deepak, Javed and Zeenat cross the barbed wire across the border to look for their missing dog, Moti. As, night settles in the children take shelter in a tin shed and to their surprise Moti had found his way back to them.
Moti now thinks that he has found a new playground and keeps disappearing across the border even as the kids keep a watch for him. Once they come across two Muslim boys from across the border and invite them over to play. One of the boys falls down from the branch of the tree and hurts his ankle. The children help him to his home where the grateful mother serves them some delicious halwa.
The children come to the realisation that if it had not been for the barbed wire fence they would not realise that they were ina nother country as, both sides of the border were so very similar. The land, the mountains and even the halwa was the same as that prepared by their mothers.

A touching story that delves into the sadness of enmity that divides and the warmth of friendship that unites.

The story is the outcome of a workshop organised by the International Centre of Literacy and Culture and The Peace Stone Foundation as well as, the Japan Foundation to develop peace, love and harmoy in children's innocent minds for their fellow beings without any discrimination, through picture books.

Reviewed by Shamim Padamsee