An abandoned building still housing remnants of its history as a museum, including an intriguing painting of two young women in the early 1970s, inspires sixth grader Vanessa (white) to curate an exhibit of her own. The focus: Her long friendship with Bailey, which recently ended for reasons Vanessa doesn’t understand. When Vanessa’s Hebrew school classmate Eli stumbles on the museum, he asks to add a display about his late dog, Einstein. Then Vanessa’s brother, high school freshman Sterling, brings in the baseball card collection he’s maintained to have something in common with their dad, who’s deploying to Afghanistan. Vanessa is worried about her dad; she’s also angry that he’s always telling her to stop picking her cuticles, as if stopping were easy. It isn’t—she’s tried. Her curiosity about the painting of the two young women is a distraction that leads to an exciting discovery: It’s rumored to be the lost work of a famous, still-living artist. The museum storyline provides an unusual and intriguing framework for this honest, nuanced look at loss, transitions, and change. For Vanessa in particular, the exhibit she curates, and later the one Bailey creates in response, provides opportunity to consider and reconsider their friendship from various perspectives. Vanessa also learns that her cuticle picking is something called a Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior—more than a label, like so much else she’s recently discovered, it’s information that gives her hope. (Ages 9-13)

Award-winning author Leila Sales’s The Museum of Lost and Found is a warm, relatable middle-grade story about a friendship falling apart and the abandoned museum that becomes a shrine to lost connections—featuring black-and-white illustrations by Jacqueline Li.

Vanessa isn’t sure which happened first: finding the abandoned museum or losing her best friend, Bailey. She doesn’t know what to do with herself now that Bailey has left her behind—but when she stumbles upon an empty, forgotten museum, her purpose becomes clear. Vanessa starts filling the museum with her own artifacts and memories, hoping that perhaps if she can find the right way to tell the story of her broken friendship, she can figure out how to make it whole again.

As Vanessa’s museum grows, it seems like the place might have the answers to other questions, too. Like why a mysterious work of art was left behind. Or how to deal with a military dad who’s trying to parent from thousands of miles away. Or why Vanessa’s bad habit is getting harder and harder to quit. Or even, maybe, how to set the past to rest and find a way to move forward.

Moving and charming, The Museum of Lost and Found is about how we grow apart from some people as we grow up—and how sometimes we can find new pieces of ourselves in the aftermath.