The Lost Drop

A review of The Lost Drop by Grégoire Laforce

Published on November 1, 2023

While reading The Lost Drop by Grégoire Laforce, I recalled a New York Times headline that proclaimed, “Your Kid’s Existential Dread is Normal.” Every parent during the pandemic breathed a sigh of relief reading that. And while “dread” may be too strong a word for what The Lost Drop’s protagonist Flo is feeling as she navigates the perpetual water cycle, there’s an undeniable undercurrent of ennui. As a fallen raindrop flowing downstream, Flo is hounded by two transcendental questions: “Who am I, and where should I go?”

The Lost Drop
Grégoire Laforce
Illustrated by Benjamin Flouw

Milky Way Picture Books
$25.99
cloth
48pp
9781990252297

When Flo finally, and inevitably, finds herself among the many drops of the sea, she is suddenly scared: “Flo was afraid of these new depths and wondered for a while if she had lost her way.” The answer she receives from the surrounding ocean sounds like a mantra: “You are here now, and you have nowhere else to go.” Finally, Flo understands her true nature.

The Jurassic-themed art by Benjamin Flouw evokes theatre stage paintings – a vibrant backdrop for Flo’s journey. The handy diagram of the water cycle offers a learning moment. But the greater lesson of The Lost Drop is the developmental leap that all kids must take into self-awareness. As kids navigate this cognitive transition, they are bound to ask hard questions, and the water cycle serves as a surprisingly apt analogy for what they are going through. One could say that the life-long quest to discover ourselves, to learn about the infinite possibilities of the world around us, and to interrogate the forces that shape our paths, is elemental.mRb

Meaghan Thurston is a Montreal-based arts and science writer, co-editor of the anthology With the World to Choose From: Seven Decades of the Beatty Lecture at McGill University, and mother to two budding readers.