Lost Children Archive Student Conference Program

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID)

8:00 to 8:30 AM: DROP-OFF

• Arrive and check in at Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID)
• Students presenting at poster sessions set up at WID, then go to Union South
• Students presenting at the plenary session, proceed directly to Union South
• Breakfast available in Union South in front of Varsity Hall

Union South (Varsity Hall, Second Floor)

8:45 to 9:00 AM: WELCOME SPEECH | Erika Rosales Garcia, WIDA Diversity and Inclusion Specialist; 4W Director, Immigration and Human Rights, UW-Madison

9:00 to 10:15 AM: PLENARY SESSION

10:15 to 10:30 AM: BREAK

• Please stay in the near vicinity of Varsity Hall
• Student ambassadors should meet at the stage immediately following the plenary session

10:30 to 11:30 AM: KEYNOTE | Valeria Luiselli, Author of Lost Children Archive

11:30 AM to 12:15 PM: LUNCH

• You may eat in Varsity Hall or one of the four designated break-out rooms on the third floor: Agriculture, Industry, Landmark, or Northwoods.
• Sort your lunch trash, recycling, and compost near the welcome desk outside Varsity Hall. Volunteers from UW-Madison’s Office of Sustainability Green Events Team will be on hand to assist you.
• Students who ordered lunches with dietary restrictions will find their lunches listed with their name, school, and dietary restriction on a separate table.

12:15 to 12:30 PM: PASSING PERIOD

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID)

12:30 to 1:30 PM: POSTER SESSION 1

• Group 1 schools: Present your projects
• Group 2 schools: Tour project sessions

1:30 to 2:30 PM: POSTER SESSION 2

• Group 2 schools: Present your projects
• Group 1 schools: Tour project sessions

2:30 to 2:45 PM: PROJECT PRIZES

• For those of you disposing your project before leaving for home, volunteers from UW-Madison will be on hand to assist you to sort and recycle your project materials.

Union South

Varsity Hall is located on the second floor of Union South. Bathrooms are located on all floors of the facility and you may find the gender-neutral bathroom on the third floor by the elevators. Please eat lunch in Varsity Hall or one of the four break-out rooms on the third floor. Please bring all your rubbish to the station by the welcome table on the second floor outside Varsity Hall to sort into trash, recycling, and composting.

Click here for a map of the second floor of Union South, where you will find Varsity Hall. To access Varsity Hall after dropping your things off at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, cross Johnson Street and walk through one of the first-floor entrances of Union South. Take the central staircase up to the second floor. A Great World Texts in Wisconsin registration table will be set up nearby.

Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery

The announcement of prizes at the end of the conference will take place in the digital projects area (Deluca Forum). If you are disposing of your project before leaving the conference, please see the UW-Madison volunteers on your way to the pickup area to sort your cardboard and recycling.

Click here for a map of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Town Center. Note the the H.F. DeLuca Forum (for video presentations and prize announcements) and the centrally located conference room (for storage).

COVID-19: We encourage all conference attendees to practice healthy habits to protect against the spread of Covid-19 and other illness: wash hands thoroughly with soap throughout the conference, use hand sanitizer, and wear a mask in crowded spaces. Hand sanitizer is available throughout the conference. For the most updated information from UW-Madison on COVID-19, please visit this dedicated resource from University Health Services (UHS).

Additional resources:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Wisconsin Department of Health
Public Health Madison Dane County

Personal Belongings: The Center for the Humanities is not responsible for the care or maintenance of any personal belongings of participating students, teachers, volunteers, or other attendees. Please remember that both Union South and the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery are campus facilities that are open to the public.

Bay Port High School,  Owen Weyenberg, Sophia Blohowiak, Amaal Hashi, & Dyllan Charles
Osseo-Fairchild High School, Carly Dahl
Wautoma High School,  Kelsey Baumann, Reagan DeMars, & Hannah Jensen
Oshkosh North High School, Campbell Gies
Dodgeland High School,  Zoye Hilby & Leila Heidner
Lake Mills High School, Silas Frandy
La Follette High School, Ezra Duane & Jay Davis
Oshkosh West High School, Aria Boehler
Étude High School, Matilde Guevara
Madison West High School, Saffron Zahorik-Schultz & Hadley Russell
Necedah High School, Angelina McNally, Celeste Coller, & Chloe Rubel-Healy
Rock University High School, Ava Wawroski
Milwaukee High School of the Arts, Dystince Robertson
New Horizons/Shorewood High School, Gray Hruska & Joaquim Saunders
Menasha High School, Indigo Shideler
SOAR High School, Amber Higley

Bay Port High School, Alexis Gaffney
Siren High School, Jaiden Fingerson
La Follette High School, Jonathan Paulino Perez
Milwaukee School of Arts, Nina Walker
Milwaukee School of Languages, Rachel Pollock
Oshkosh North High School, Damian Engelmann
Menasha High School, Ellie Riddle
New Horizons/Shorewood High School, Gray Hruska
Dodgeland High School, Savannah Bubolz
Étude High School, Elliot Passmore
Whitehall Memorial High School, Aryana Ausderau
Osseo Fairchild High School, Lillian Kufner
Madison West High School, Brooke Kramer
Oshkosh West High School, Jacob Schaefer
Wautoma High School, Erin Blader
Rock University High School, Jacky Marquis
Lake Mills High School, Allistar Horwatich
SOAR High School, Timmy Stoltman

Lucky Ali
DNA Replication / DNA Helix model of Lost Children Archive
Interpretive Slides explaining DNA replication with the family dynamic in the novel
This presentation depicts and explains the analysis of characters within Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli as they relate to DNA Replication and the role of the proteins, Helicase and SSBP and the Hydrogen and Covalent bonds. It includes a poem depicting the drives and connections of DNA replication to the family dynamic. As the parents pull the children away from each other, signs of disconnection eventually lead to the children being pulled from each other just as Helicase separates the two strands of DNA. The many allusions to “Space Oddity” by David Bowie also emphasize this interpretation as well as the symbolism and metaphors of the family dynamic.

Brinley Anderson, Aleeya Guerndt, Ella Lohmeier
Archives of Youth Voices
Interactive presentation through open-ended prompts, visual, and audio
Historically, youth voices have been underrepresented in archives which is related to the novel, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. The protagonists in the novel attempt to capture and preserve the voices and the history of youth Apache warriors and youth refugees through the art of storytelling. The goal of this project is to pastiche Luiselli’s use of narration, stream of consciousness, and postmodern techniques used throughout the “Echo Canyon” chapter (Luiselli 317). May these youth stories represent our community of readers, thinkers, dreamers, and believers.

Kaylee Bordenkircher
Psychological Lens
Character analysis psychologically
In Lost Children Archive, the author constantly switches between describing the external world, and narrating internal feelings. I psychologically analyzed and diagnosed the boy with a mental illness and painted a visual representation of what I interpreted the inside of his head looks like. Colors of the painting were chosen based on the tone of the external vs. internal environment. Through Valeria Luiselli’s retelling of her family road trip, she displays her relationship to the boy specifically by switching to his perspective while writing. Based on information Luiselli has given about the boy, his quotes, and behaviors, he should be diagnosed with Dissociative Anxiety Disorder.

Kavari Brann
Nature’s Course
Diorama display
Nature’s Course presents a visual interpretation of how the changing natural landscape reflects the changing tensions of the family’s relationship in Lost Children Archive. The varying colors on the mountain are drawn from Luiselli’s choice of diction throughout the novel, with the colors at the beginning of the novel being displayed upon the base of the mountain, and the colors at the end being displayed at the top. Elements that shape seemingly unchanging products of nature – such as water, light, and wind – are included to represent the gradual decline of the family’s bond. The page numbers on the rocks represent instances in the novel in which Luiselli characterized the tension in the family using the imagery of stone, and the QR codes provide an analysis of each element. The materials comprise of both natural and artificial components, similar to how family’s bond was initially forged naturally, but only stayed together with artificial emotions echoed from holding onto the past.

Apollo Brunette
Sounds of the Lost in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive
A collection of sounds gathered onto a map
The Sounds of the Lost is a digital soundscape collection featuring sounds from Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. The sounds are showcased onto a road map following the journey the family takes. The experience uses auditory imagery to fully immerse the viewer in the digital experience in the setting, atmosphere, and tone of the novel. Many of the sounds are from our Boy protagonist whose point of view and narration take over in the second half of the novel. From start to finish the audio will follow the plot giving listeners and readers an understanding of the transformation of the family dynamic.

Isabella Bryson
1996 Volvo Wagon Black With a Huge Trunk in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive
Physical Model, Mixed Medium
In Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, the characters take a journey in a car across the southwest. As they travel, the parents’ pessimism and failing relationship contrasts the children’s optimism and sense of adventure and shows how self-awareness is harmful. A model of the car (as written on page Luiselli 25) that the family used to travel to Arizona with. Each corner of the car is decorated with a representation of the family members’ items, and there is a curated, modernized road trip playlist, with music coming from the radio. There is a contrast between the seats of the children – which contain collected items from their trip and a brighter color palette, and the seats of the couple – which contain darker and duller colors, and virtually no items. Both segments represent the contrasting personalities that have overshadowed the parent’s failing marriage, contrasted by the youthful and optimistic personalities of the siblings.

Tess Christiansen
A Lyrical Analysis of Lost Children Archive
Lyrical Composition
With my project, I decided to connect to my musical roots and attempt to compose a lyrical analysis of Valerie Luisinelli’s Lost Children Archive. Most poetic songs are composed on the theme of love, so I decided to construct my lyrics based on the crumbling relationship between the husband and wife featured in this novel. I specifically created this project to focus on the wife’s point-of-view, through the use of embedded textual evidence that supports what she is truly feeling. This way, Luiselli’s narrator can have a louder voice to be heard, unlike what it seems in her novel.

Piper Cook
Unearthing
Blackout Poetry
Unearthing is a collection of blackout poems that reveal the deeper meaning behind the wordy narrative of Lost Children Archive. There are six poems in total derived from the book: five from the perspective of the mother, and one from the perspective of the boy. The poems focus on different issues that plague the characters, such as the mother’s failing marriage or the children’s complicated relationship with their parents. Additionally, the poems double as artistic renditions of the different themes explored throughout the novel.

Caden Cornette
Travel Through History Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Website
In Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, the author uses historical allusions related to the character’s journey so that readers delve into layers of meaning. Specifically, this project will reveal more details about the meaning behind characters’ names and major historical events that happened along the path they take from New York to Arizona.

Brady DeRuyter
Lines of Representation
Miro Line Drawing
My project consists of multiple sets of two lines drawn on paper representing characters’ relationships with each other throughout Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli to show the progressive decay and development of the many characters. I have also incorporated music to tie into each relationship, either picked from Lost Children Archive or chosen from outside to emulate the meaning of the book. All of these are compiled into a makeshift archive in order to make a final tie-in to the book.

Elizabeth Falkenberg
Warm Welcoming
Padlet analyzing fragmentation and defamiliarization
In the book, Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli comments on the lack of identity sanctioned by history. The Warm Welcoming project is a compilation of migrant’s death reports throughout February 2024, and comments on an interpretation of the book. The project mirrors the Migrant Mortality Reports Luiselli includes on pages 244-249. The project is aimed to apply the author’s inclusion of these reports to recent deaths of migrants coming across the border. The fragmentation provided by the mortality reports then comments on the ceaselessness of migrant mortality, as well as interprets why Luiselli included the reports in the novel. The defamiliarization of presenting death as a list within the book allows readers to think about life and the book in a new way, as well as using this to further the understanding of fragmentation within the book.

Estelle Finlan, Jolie Jacques, Kennedy Banen
Which Character Are You?
Character Buzzfeed Quiz
To illustrate our understanding of this year’s world text novel, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, we designed the personality quiz “Which Character Are You?” to determine what character is most similar to our participants. Our goal is to create an interactive layout with well-crafted questions with unique traits and decisions of the main four characters. We aimed to focus on the overall characterization behind each of the protagonists (the family: Ma, Pa, Boy & Girl). To look into the results we created a poster representing each character. The poster includes songs that resonate with each character, their traits, interests, descriptions and important events that lead to their characterization. Our quiz will be available to students via a QR code found on our poster.

Alexis Gaffney
Sound & Silence
Various Creative Writing Pieces
The recurring motifs of sound and silence throughout Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli is the basis to these creative writing pieces. Each composition, written in a different style, reflects and comments on each motif at different points throughout the story. Some of the writing uses imagery and structure to pastiche the writing of not only Valeria Luiselli, but also Janis Joplin and Kris Kristofferson. Other pieces are wholly original, but draw elements from LCA to show acute analysis of the work. In Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, sound and intimacy are intertwined, exemplified in the relationships between each of the family members.

Jessica Gagan
The Journey Through Two Deserts in Lost Children Archive
A Dual Physical Timeline
Journeys taken through time often include challenges. The Journey Through Two Deserts project uses Exodus from the Bible and Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli to demonstrate parallel stories about escaping oppression, crossing bodies of water, and unifying through food. The 3D wood carving, exploding off a wood-burned timeline, replicates both stories and the corresponding “Analysis Notes” capture how closely tied these stories are and show a similar theme about how leaders are necessary for a successful journey.

Delaney Gallagher
We Are All Documentarians
Personal Video Archive Pastiche of Lost Children Archive
In Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, multiple stories are being told: the mother’s, the father’s, the boy’s and the girl’s, the lost children’s, and the Apache people’s. Some of these stories are told from a first person perspective, allowing insight into the direct thoughts and feelings of the characters — their own personal archive — but the other stories are told from an outsider’s perspective, based only on observations and no guaranteed facts. Luiselli presents the idea that our stories have the power to act as echoes that reverberate, distort, and inspire. But how do we know if these stories are told truthfully and accurately? Told without edits and biases? And what impact, if any, do these stories have? These are the questions I wanted to explore with my project. Just like all the members of the family are crafting their own personal archives through writing and photographs on their trip through the southern United States ending in Arizona, I wanted to create my own personal archive of my own trip to Arizona. Through video footage, I crafted my own story, with a first-person perspective of my life. But are these moments fully accurate and truthful to me? Or is there bias present? And does this story even matter or hold any power?

Sam Groff & Talen Dickson
Maps and Their Forms in Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Graphical Analysis of Relationships
Lost Children Archive utilizes the motif of maps to explore the journey of the relationships throughout the text. As the journey pauses at important locations along the map of the story’s physical distance traveled, character relationships come to a head and are tested. Maps denote change and journey, similarly, physics graphs are used to depict change over time. Using physics concepts, a visual representation of the family’s change in relationship as these stops progress is established through the graphing of such principles.

Reagan Hovden
Echo-cardiogram of Scenes in Lost Children Archive
A multi-media painting
My project is a painting of the scenery described in the book, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. The painting uses different EKGs and is in the shape of an echocardiogram to tie into the themes related to the personification of nature and the motif of sound found throughout the novel. Echocardiograms use soundwaves to show how blood flows throughout the body. The electrocardiogram uses P waves to check the rhythm of the atria’s and T waves to check the ventricles. Additionally, I’m using the EKG trace lines from my own heart at different stages to represent the different emotions and throughout the book. Every color I used in the painting is a color that is found on an actual Echocardiogram.

Izzy Huhtala, Lainey Reynolds, Willa Stocki
Bay Port Archive Box
Visual Piece
Bay Port Archive Box is a visual compilation of the culture of Bay Port High School. The execution of this piece is inspired by the writing style and detail found in Boxes I-VII from the novel Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. The project includes an accumulation of artifacts such as school newspapers, photos, CDs, items, and images which correspond to an explanation of our interpretation of the novel’s meaning that everything holds significance.

Briana Inda
Childhood: An Archive
Interactive Website presentation
The dreamline and fantastical elements in the novel Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli are developed through use of epigraphs, allusions, aphorisms, symbols, and photographs. This interactive website presentation defines and describes the author’s structure, style, and techniques and gives meaning to themes of childhood decline, lost memories, coming of age, and loss of innocence. In the novel Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, the author conveys a perspective; adults expose too much of the world to children, and expect just as much understanding, all at the expense of their innocence.

Taylor Jacques, Alaina Sheedy, Aimee Nelson, Mia Leszko
Crime Connection Board in Lost Children Archive
Crime Connection Board
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli shows the slow destruction of a family as they travel across the country from New York to Arizona. This project includes evidence connected by strings to show the progression of a disconnection between the characters, ultimately created by the parents. Overall the resources and evidence connect to the global issue that the corruption of a family is dependent on caretakers rather than the victimized children. The project mirrors Valeria Luiselli’s writing style of pulling from different resources and connecting them into an archive. In this web we connect all the information from the book to make an additional archive of the destruction within the family.

Maleah Kohn
Lost Identities Into One in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Childrens Archive
Mixed Media Fingerprint Painting on Poster Board
Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive highlights the significance of identity. We have gained a greater understanding of two significant identities as the novel progresses: Swift Feather and Memphis. Memphis was the inquisitive young child who would frequently steal her mother’s sticky notes so she could doodle on them. Since his sister, Memphis was the only person who could see the finger maps, Swift Arrow, the elder child, would always design them for her. That’s why I employed fingerprints—a means of identification—for my project by creating a fingerprint painting on post-it notes to serve as an example of how important a single identity can be in creating an entire picture. Along with each doodle representing a part of the novel as well. Relationships, experiences, and beliefs form the framework of an identity.

Adelyn Kroening
Lost Scrapbook
Photography of Lost Children Archive
The Lost Scrapbook is a collection of polaroid photos arranged within a collage-like style of moments in the novel, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. The scrapbook project highlights the theme of love displayed throughout the book by incorporating some type of symbol associated with love, even the word itself. There is a provided written commentary on each photo for further explanation and interpretation. By using the collage style, I demonstrate the scatteredness of the family bond, and the way the parents mashed their lives together. The order of the photos follows the flow of the plot. Love remains steady across space but fails due to human capacity.

Muliftu Mama and Najah Mohamed
Lucky Arrow Character Autopsy
Character Autopsy
Throughout the novel, Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli meticulously crafts sentences, uses unified diction, and metaphors to show the widening relationship between the mother and the father and between the children’s relationship with their parents. The visual and written portion of this project embed details from the novel to show the mother’s character influences and her physical and figurative journey which ultimately conveys the theme that people resort to silence in a relationship when they are no longer heard.

Sawyer Marquardt
Doodles in Lost Children Archive
Map of Personal Thematic Analysis Through Sound and Doodles
The doodles, sounds, and notes that visually and auditorily tie into specific book pages will guide the viewer through a reader’s particular experience and through thematic lessons of the novel, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. Notes, annotations, doodles, and song lyrics that were originally annotated into the actual novel are transferred and labeled onto a visual. The visual reflects, diverges, and reunites with the characters’ journeys and express the optimistic nature of childhood, question the nobility of choosing to live life, show the never ending human capacity to find meaning anywhere, and offer an anecdote at the end of the road on the map so that it becomes an enveloping, immersive experience that is bound to strike a chord with each and every reader, and which they can take or leave with intention because meaning is found everywhere.

Melony Martin
Looking for the Truth in Lost Children Archive
Blacklight Art Compilation Piece
In the book, The Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli depicts the idea of secrets having to be discovered, for silence having to have a voice, for untold stories to be told. Throughout this book the focus is on the unknown being made known. Immigrants’ stories, the families destinies, lost history, the characters’ true emotions, and relationships are all discovered to the ones who want to discover them. Some truths are covered by so many lies that it takes one to go to different paths to discover them. The Looking for the Truth project reflects the extent of the hidden truth and allows viewers to feel the process of finally being able to unfold.

Amaris Martinez & Keria Wosnig
The Chronological Archive of Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Poster Board Analysis about all the places they visited, lessons, connections, & grievances
In Lost Children Archive, a southwestern road trip through the United States reveals thematic concepts, lessons, connections, and grievances laced with literary touchstones. As the family journey continues, the significance of each place they stop at affects and shows the changes in characterization and perspectives among the family. Using a visual representation of the family’s journey, we will showcase the theme that families in search of a better life may endure separation and hardships while gaining new perspectives through their situations.

Annah Martinez
Broken Homes
Gouache Paintings/Short Stories
My project depicts the lives of various children from households broken apart from divorce, immigration, economic issues, and other causes. The use of short stories that pastiche Luiselli’s writing style, with an emphasis on linguistics, alongside diverse portraits demonstrates the complexity of family and its impact on childhood.

Alex Michels
All Paths Lead to Apacheria
Map Analysis
All Paths Lead to Apacheria is a comprehensive map designed to help aid readers in understanding of paths taken by not only the family, but also an example journey taken by Lost Children. The path of the family takes locations expressly mentioned in the book and places them on the map. However the Lost Children path combines the story of Manuelas daughters as well as the 15 elegies placed throughout the book. The lost childrens path gives insight into the difficulty of making the journey from a Central American nation to the United States, combined with the already mentioned difficulty of gaining citizenship in the book.

Payton Nickels
The Mystery of the Lost Children in Lost Children Archive
Crime Board
This project will be a crime board representing the idea that all events are connected in the novel Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. Elements on the board include: important quotations from the novel, pictures taken and edited, old camera film, personal annotations, missing posters for the lost children, and one string that connects everything. In the book Lost Children Archive Valeria Luiselli uses flashbacks and a unique writing style to represent the idea that all events are connected.

Eden Nygaard
Therapy Session Notes with Characters from Lost Children Archive
Imagined counseling notes
This project encompasses counseling notes from a session with the boy and girl characters from Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. Intake forms, a transcript of direct citations and imagined conversations, and therapist notes show analysis of the author’s characterization and understanding of the theme that children should be protected from the harsh realities of the world. The author uses similes and heavily connotative diction to give the reader the idea that children should be protected from the harsh realities of the world.

Vivi Orr, Dannika Owens, Katy Reinsbach, Alaina Shimon
Threads & Maps
Setting analysis in Lost Children Archive
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli inspired this project which uses a physical map and markings to demonstrate the symbolic journey the author creates between characters. Throughout the journey, themes of migration, family dynamics, identity, loss, and grief emerge. Even though time and space pull people apart, the detailed memories and experiences bind them together. The placement of the thread on the map explains the family dynamic during their physical and symbolic journey. The dropped pins on the map represent the important memories the family created along the journey that will bind them together.

Elysia Pitts and Jocelyn Cartwright
Comparison of Characters in Lost Children Archive
Mixed media
This visual imagery project connects characters from Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli through a metaphor. We built a train to use as an archetype to express the similarity and contrasts between the boy & girl and the lost children. Throughout the journey of the boy and girl, there is a physical and literary overlap of experiences with the lost children. The train is the bridge between the two stories, bringing the boy and girl and the lost children even closer in comparisons and interlaps of their stories. Details of the author’s craft are interlinked into the train visual. The structure of the text allows us to connect the lost children and the boy and girl through challenges faced on their journeys.

Gavin Quinn
Lost Polaroids & Poetry in Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Inspired Found Poetry and Polaroid Project
Lost Polaroids & Poetry project is a compilation of polaroids and new poems inspired by hopeful and desolate diction from the novel, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. The polaroids are recreated locally in Green Bay, WI and based upon those photos found in the novel. The poems are written based on diction and imagery related to the photos and encapsulates the overall theme about the paradox of America: it is beautiful and empty; it is bursting with life and abandoned from it. Overall, the novel and this project use hopeful and desolate diction and imagery to depict beautiful and bleak landscapes and tone.

Derick Rehn
Echo Canyon Illustrated
Painting, Acrylic on Book Pages
Echo Canyon Illustrated is a painting based on the novel Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. It depicts “the boy” protagonist at the moment of heightened emotion when searching for literal and metaphorical attention from his parents. Actual pages from the novel’s climax chapter, “Echo Canyon” (Luiselli 317) are used for layered meaning, including emphasized and impactful words that shine through the painting, ultimately emulating the boy’s internal struggle and coming of age journey. Throughout Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli the boy protagonist deals with his internal struggles through his coming-of-age journey.

Clara Reindl
Family Cabin
Blueprint Setting Analysis of Lost Children Archive
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli inspired me to create blueprints on Revit, a CAD Architecture program, demonstrating the cabin the family stays in before the children leave on their adventure as well as the Elvis Presley BLVD. This project required two steps: planning and drawing and working on Revit. Ultimately, the project demonstrates my interpretation of the setting that shows how being alone and together can separate family members. While being in the same house you never know what’s actually going through someone’s head. Being in a hotel room you are right next to the children and can watch over them, but being in a small cabin that has separate rooms watching over children is hard. When brainstorming what to do my project on choosing architecture was very easy. When reading the novel I was very intrigued when they would stop at each motel or cabin and I thought how does this have anything to do with the storyline of the novel.

Julia Revall, Gracie Greening, Chloe Baranczyk
Geology of Echo Canyon & Character Analysis in Lost Children Archive
Slideshow
This project is an in-depth character analysis of the mother, father, boy, and girl in Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. The slideshow presentation includes an evaluation of the four rocks mentioned in the section called Echo Canyon and an analysis of how the traits of the rocks compare to the characters.

Clayton Shefchik & Jenna Vincent
Variations of Expressing Life Through Art
Piano Composition and Written Analysis
Variations of Expressing Life Through Art displays differences between the imaginative minds of the children and the tired, more pessimistic adults found in the novel, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli. The original compositional intentions of the piano include dynamic contrast, stylistic choices, and tonal shifts to demonstrate the author’s stylistic devices such as stream of consciousness, alternating narration, and juxtaposition. An accompanying written composition continues the theme that growing older causes people to lose focus on their positive aspirations.

Myla Spice
Our Girl in Lost Children Archive
Mixed media, Acrylic on Canvas
The Our Girl project is a painting of the girl character in the novel, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli and uses direct characterization quotations to support her development. An Impressionist style is applied so as to give a unique perspective, much like how she’s seen differently between each character’s perspective. Valeria Luiselli shows the loss of childhood’s boundlessness and how losing it makes it harder to understand but no matter what, “you and I will find each other again” (Luiselli 350).

Katelyn Starnes
Caught In The Storm in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive
Original Composition Using MuseScore
The Caught In The Storm Project is an original piece that represents the family’s feeling of intensity during a storm (Luiselli #). The project includes rising and falling action in the music, capturing the harsh reality, starting with the calm before a storm. Clouds in the distance, soft flute sounds corrupted by the darkness. Rainfall, accompanied by the sound of warm chimes slowly floating away at the layer of your sorrows, haunting, yet beautiful. For a moment, you feel, and think nothing. The melody carries you across distance, slowly intensifying, and worry sets in. Up and down you go, slowly drifting away into the dark, murky skies. Fear sets. The drums start beating, louder and louder, and the symbols crash, shocking you to the core. Only hope in others. Gathering with those you call family, hoping to feel safe and unafraid. A sense of serenity enters the mind, extinguishing the flames that burn your soul. For a moment, you feel, and think nothing. So brief, yet so long, you feel at ease.

McKenna Titulaer & Elianna Matuszeski
Collection of Light
Shadow Box Creation
We created two shadow boxes to interpret the light and dark throughout the work, Lost Children Archive written by Valeria Luiselli. Throughout the novel it became apparent that the actions occurring in the light juxtaposed what occurred in the darkness. Through the collection of artifacts and supporting textual evidence we have cultivated two archives that encapsulate what occurs in the light versus the shadows.

Maia Virlee
Lost Children Archive Playlist
Characterization of the family of Lost Children Archive through song
The Lost Children Archive Playlist Project provides a Spotify-style library with a playlist inspired by Ma, Pa, the boy, and the girl. Each song is carefully picked to show a deeper understanding of each of these characters. Each playlist consists of three thoroughly analyzed songs with quoted lyrics and supporting evidence from the book and four songs with single song lyric quotations meant to link the song to the character as a whole. From angst-filled metal to woeful pop, each character crosses genres to fully round them out. Each playlist’s title slide includes a link to the real playlist for each character.

Owen Weyenberg, Sophia Blohowiak, Amaal Hashi, Dyllan Charles
The Fragmented Archive of Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Symbolic visual analysis of setting and characterization
The Fragmented Archive project explores characterization, setting, symbolism, and motifs in the novel, Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luisilli to convey the theme that history often repeats and converges with itself. The prism visually amplifies the fragmentation of the family by separating them and separating their story into a beginning, middle, and end. The circular stand exemplifies the continuation of their stories and references the motif of circles. Finally, the prism is left open to literally shed light on important artifacts of the characters and to offer illumination to the character development metaphorically.

Savannah B.
The mind of a child
Painting
A painting demonstrating the mental struggle of the boy. Having a family that doesn’t fit the “normal” stereotype and desperately wanting the attention of his new mother he struggles with his new life and the decisions he decides to make. This painting will show the paths of the two parents and the path the young boy ultimately decides to make. The hands at the bottom represent all the lost children and the writing over top is meant to be from the perspective of the young boy. The things going through his mind before he decides to run away.

Kadynce Buchda
Without Swift Feather
Painting
A painting of Memphis standing at Niagara Falls, facing the water.

Mason Carter and Anton Mikolanis
Missing Pieces
Art Piece
Missing Pieces is a non interactive art piece in the form of an incomplete puzzle, made for the book Lost Children Archive. It is meant to represent the boy’s coming-of-age, as well as the incomplete information that he has about the world around him. It also covers the investigations of the lost children, and how many of their stories will never be discovered.

Kaleb Cousineau
View
Painting
My painting represents the dark side of the book. That dark side being the lost children, death, and the family’s disconnection. The moon is distant and disconnected with earth, and the family also suffers with these. The four stars represent each family member, and they are on each side of the moon and see a different phase representing their point of view in the story and in general. The quotes represent the complexity of the story and its topics. And then the dark foggy ground covered in skulls represents the immigrants and their deaths.

Morgana Cronesgrove & Mia Simmons
Space Oddity
Animation
An animatic following the relationship between Memphis and Swift Feather, set to the song Space Oddity by David Bowie.

Avery Hafenstein and Ally Feilbach
Untitled
Poster Board
Each side of the poster represents the differences between the boy and the mom. Whether it be their perspective on the different topics in the book or how they are as a person.

Zoye Hilby and Leila Heidner
The Trunk
Interactive Physical Art Display
Our project entails the small details that the family brings along their journey. These small items are part of a separate archive full of memories and information that is held dear to them. The immigration crisis has deeply affected the family’s dynamic in many aspects such as; their communication, job and family relationships, cohesiveness and open communication. This is a major issue towards the end of the book because the parents have become completely consumed in their work and their attention towards the children start to fade. The immigration crisis is crucial to the story and that’s why we thoroughly incorporated this ongoing crisis into our project by explaining the small excerpts and documents that the parents chose to bring along with them on their journey.

Karson and Colton
Documenting the Undocumented
Map(s)
This project represents the lost children’s journey up to the border of the United States and what happens to them after they cross. The purpose of the project is to show how big of a feat their journey was by creating a visual documentation of the path they traveled.

Kayden and Izzy
Decided Your Future
Painting
This is a painting that shows the path the family took and upcoming decisions they have to make. While both the parents want different things, their children struggle between the two decisions. The parents’ conflicts cause the children to run away from their struggles and problems. The painting overall shows how the parents figure out which path they want to go in life and how it affects the children.

Robert Link and Jacob Robarge
Lost Children Archive explored through maps
Map
A map of the road trip throughout the United States which we explore and explain the themes of travel/migration and family issues. The map shows how as the family travels farther and farther from where they started, the more divided the family becomes.

Mallory and Izzy
Erased
Physical Display
This piece represents the lost children that left their lives behind and became part of the forgotten. This project is used to show the significance and reality of the ongoing immigration crisis. This project displays a child being pulled under the sand to join the others that have disappeared. The objects and the name tags are there to represent how these were innocent children, each on their own journeys. Now they have lost their childhood and are “missing” from existence.

Nick and Conner
A Race Against Time / The Long Road
Board Game
This project is meant to represent the family’s road trip across America and how their relationships changed overtime. Using dice to move across the map, you can land on card spaces. These card spaces are meant to be bad and are kept the whole game. These cards will determine how badly your family was damaged throughout the trip. If you run out of cards before the end of the game you automatically lose. This game shows how the family in the book was damaged overtime by the trip and how they were meant to leave in the end.

Olivia and Allisyn
Cultural crochet chain
Crocheted Work
Our project is a crochet tapestry with the flags of countries with the most undocumented immigrants that come to the U.S. Our project brings awareness to the many different cultures that try to make the journey to America and highlights all the people who are trying to find a better life. It shows how although all the immigrants come from different places, they are connected by their struggle to escape their home country.

Sandi Osorio and Olivia Passig
Echoes
Rap Song
“Echoes” is a rap inspired by Valeria Luiselli’s “Lost Children Archive,” illustrating the struggles of the disconnected family and the deeper meaning of each individual. Through vivid verses, it portrays the division between the parent’s ambition and the yearning for family connection. The rap conveys the mother’s passionate pursuit of the lost children, leaving her children longing for her presence, and the father’s relentless dedication to research the Apaches, causing him to drift further from his family. The rap explores the dynamics of the children’s innocence and understanding paralleling immigrant challenges. There’s a glimmer of hope in the bridge, suggesting the possibility of beginning to understand each other when the children are found in Echo Canyon. Overall, “Echoes” serves as a reflection on the complexities of family relationships with emphasis on migrant children struggles.

Lisa Perez and Jenna Schaalma
Untitled
Physical Display
This project displays cargo containers representing the immigrant’s journey. This symbolizes freedom towards other immigrants. This project also represents the children or other immigrants who did not make it and left all of their belongings behind. The boy represents becoming an adult and being able to find his little sister while he lost her in their journey to find the lost girls.

Angelina Prill and Abby Oestreich
Astray
Painting and Poem
Our project involves a poem and painting portraying the movement to a new country in an attempt to achieve freedom and prosperity, while feeling lost. The painting illustrates the prolonged process of immigration and the necessary steps that immigrants take in order to reside in a new country. Our poem will dive deeper into the journey of a little girl traveling to a different country with little to no knowledge on what is going on around her. Both the painting and poem focus on different perspectives and the challenges endured with traveling on the journey to freedom.

Isabella R. and Irelyn A.
The Original Box
Art
In our project, we turned the book into its own archive because turning things into an archive in the book is important. It is an archive about the important aspects we picked from the book. We started with a box titled “The Original Box.” This box holds our archive and it’s contents. We have drawings over the pages, capturing our impressions of the story, creating a palimpsest in which Valeria Luiselli’s original story still shines through. There are also Polaroids and photos from the book in the archive along with objects and quotes from the book that made the strongest impression on us.

Solice Schneider
LCA roadmap
Poster
My project for LCA is a roadmap of the places the characters traveled through with information pertaining to the two projects that the parents were working on. The point of this project is to help convey what I believe the message of the book is. What I believe to be the message is that we spend too much time focusing on prejudice to remember that everyone is the same going through different struggles that are made by others.

John Shramek and Gage Geneman
Lost Children of the World
Poster
A poster of differences and parallels to the Lost Children refugees in the story and the children around the world who experience the same things. There will be individual sections outlining the struggles of child refugees in different countries and then one large section comparing events in the book to events around the world.

Noelle Thull
Boxed-in
Painting
5 smaller paintings—illustrating the five boxes that the family brings along the road trip—all latched onto one canvas, Boxed-in. Each box has its owner. Some have memories, polaroids, trinkets, and gadgets that prove to be useful on their journey. Each box holds not only each person’s life but allows the audience to make sense of their lived experiences and understand people not only by their personality but what they surround themselves with. Like the book, the boxes are categorized, divided, and archived memories and ambitions. The father’s research on the Apache’s and the mother’s news clippings illustrate their devotion to work. I chose to add the boy’s Polaroids to his empty box because they capture the journey they embarked on and capture his engrossment in his hobby. The girl’s empty box anticipates the fulfilling life she will live and the whatnots that she will amass, just like her family.

Sebastian Velazquez, Adrian Leffler, and Sean Heller
Lost Children Archive Passport
Creative/Design
We created a passport to symbolize the family’s adventure throughout the book in a captivating, easy to follow concept. In addition to documenting the states they visit, we also incorporated stamps and stickers representing significant landmarks, pivotal moments, or memorable encounters from the story. This passport serves as a collage for readers to understand the different culture and family structure from within the book. This passport helped us and will help other readers to understand on a deeper level, the characters and their journey.

LoriJean Wilson
Disconsolation
Sculpture
A fence standing in the middle of a canvas board covered with “sand”. On each side of the fence, you see hand’s desperately, but unsuccessfully reaching for one of the hands on the other side of the fence. This piece represents the desconsolation people on both sides of the border feel when they’re separated from their loved ones. Oftentimes, people don’t know whether or not their family member is still alive and on their way to them or being picked apart by crows in the desert.

John Zenk
The Box
Clay
This box represents the car they are all riding in because they’re going somewhere and only going in one direction, not looking back, hence the single window. The wheels also do not turn side to side because they are locked in on the path they are going and there is again, no way to turn back. The point is that they’re getting to the final destination bar none.

Landon Backman
Visual Art

Merrick DuChateau
Laser Cut
My project is a laser cut model of the little red book that was a prominent part of the story. It shows how the family was very disconnected from one another. The family each had their own way of looking at the world and the biggest disconnect was between the parents and the kids. The book kept the Mother and son connected. The mother and son had two very different perspectives but showed how an important topic can bring people together. The mother was very logical in thinking. The son had a child-like wonder but swapped to act like a parent to his sister. Once they started reading the book they both focused on the border crisis and acted like a mother and son. This shows that the main point of the novel was the border crisis and the process of crossing the border and how it is shown in the news compared to the actual thing. My project shows the main thing connecting the mother and son that narrated the story and their different perspectives on it and how humans can bond on a topic they have no relation to.

Marshall Gartner
Visual Art
For my project I created a poster for missing children. In the book, one of the main plot lines is the children who are going missing at the border between Mexico and America. No one really knows who these children are and there’s not that much information on where they could be beside the fact that the last time they were heard from was when they were crossing the border. Even though some of these children have families that know who they were, the families don’t know exactly where these children are or what might have happened to them. In the book we don’t even get to know the names of the mothers’ children who also go missing for a while. The poster that I made has descriptions and information on the missing kids but it isn’t very helpful due to the text being messed up and the images of the kids are distorted making it hard to tell what they actually look like. Both of these aspects represent how the missing children are known by some people but not much is actually known about them.

Matilde Guevara
Visual Art
My project centers around my childhood blanket: the same blanket that traveled with me and my family from Bolivia to the U.S. As someone that’s never explored this part of their life, I saw it a good opportunity to start, even if my experience was much nicer than those of undocumented immigrants. The boy and the girl went through a small peak of what loss of innocence can be; in the end still retaining what they had before because of the amount of time spent on the journey and the reception they got once found again. I felt as though that loss was still important to showcase; to understand the difference between typical loss that happens while aging, and what can happen when going through traumatic events such as crossing the border. It’s crucial to differentiate loss in innocence and how they affect children because how are they, undocumented children, supposed to feel the American dream if their journey leaves little to dream about. As said before these paintings depict my childhood blanket in different stages of disarray; going from completely intact, to seeing some distress, to completely broken. It’s important to note these are burn marks. Smaller holes are able to be patched up with dedication, but after a while they are unable to be saved.

Grace Hamm + Comet Pasterski
Dance

Creek Harvey
Visual Art

Kyle Irby
Music
I created a song that expresses the loss of yourself. At many points in the story the characters are put through situations that lead to them giving up or losing something. These scenarios are very real and happen to everyone, including myself. So it inspired me to make a song. I’ve been making songs for a while now and this was fun for me but I got burnt out from this one so it’s still in its creation phase.

Elliot Passmore
Visual Art
My project is a side-by-side painting, of the perspective of the boy and the girl, as well as Manuela’s two daughters who were trying to cross the border. I wanted to show the feeling of being lost through the children’s perspective, both having different circumstances, but both share the experience of disappearing, being lost, and only having each other. One side shows the boy and girl walking past Echo Canyon, which is where the boy planned for him and his sister to meet their parents. The second side shows a depiction of Manuela’s daughters dresses and how I imagined they would look like. In the book Manuela says that she put her phone number on the inside tag of the girls dresses so that when the girls reach America, someone could call the number and bring the girls to her. While these two kids are missing for completely different reasons, they also share the similarities and experiences as lost children.

Aerial Roth
3D Model
My project for this GrWT class and the novel (Lost Children Archive) is a 3D model that is made up of three parts each sculpted to represent a fishing rod, a gate, and a lake. These different parts of my project interact with each other to depict immigration and the book that we had read. This creation is set up in a way to depict that a fishing rod is casting a line that wraps around the gate and then hits the lake. This is made this way to represent how the family in the novel or just any immigrant family in general, has to go through a ton of trials and tribulations to help others immigrate which is represented by the “fishing line” wrapping around a gate before hitting the lake. While creating this idea I had found out a lot about the U.S immigration policy and how it works. This policy restricts people’s access to getting into the U.S and I believe that this policy is needed but it is also heavily unfair. I believe this because The process for getting into the U.S is really long and complicated, which can create issues when somewhere in the world is in trouble and people need a place to flee to. In creating this I want my viewer to see a visual representation of how the Immigration policy and the novel can be seen.

Koda Siebert
Visual Art
This project represents the long journey the family took with its different terrains and locations. Similarly, this shows the journey of the lost children. Both of the highways are away from each other, which represents a mother being disconnected from her lost child while going through the border. I interpret the meaning of my project as the reality of people crossing the U.S. border and how families get lost. The highways being presumably miles apart shows the distance between the mother and child, as well as how far the rest stop is from the highway, which is 63 miles on the mother’s side. On the child’s side, there are huge mountains and a lack of any form of civilization from what the paper can see. My project suggests the mistreatment and dehumanization of people crossing the border and how it can end with young children being split apart from their families and potentially dying in the hot weather. It also shows society being dehumanized by it due to the fact the signs are still up with bullet holes and cobwebs, showing how long they’ve been there.

Kesli Sonneman
Visual Art
My project represents the family by showing links between them, the string is there to do that. There are also ties between the lost children and the children themselves, so there is also a string connecting them. In The Lost Children Archive, a big theme is the relationships between the characters, whether it’s good or bad. For example, the relationship between the girl and boy is a big part of the story, especially during the second part of the story when the boy is the narrator. We can see that they both truly care for each other. We see that at the end when we learn that the whole narration of part 2 was a tape recording for the little girl, so she can look back at it when she gets older. They would not see each other again, because the mom and dad are splitting up. The project represents the relations between the characters, I used Polaroids and drew them in because taking Polaroid photos was a (sorta) big part of the story. I used red rope to connect them, like I said earlier this represents a tie between the two characters. There are also little snippets that explain the relationship.

Giancarlo Almendarez Reynoso & Brandon Hernandez
Immigration Detention Centers
Drawing/Poster
In this project we created posters that protest for immigrant rights. In this series, we protest against detention centers, against separation between immigrant families, and for immigrants’ rights. Our posters are supposed to represent what problem immigrants face in the US and why they and others protest to raise awareness. This is our interpretation of the novel because in the novel Manuela was separated from daughters, and then when the girls tried to immigrate, they got caught and eventually were found dead.

Shamirah Anderson
Box History
3-D Project
My project for the book Lost Children Archive will reference the book’s theme of having boxes for each individual character. I plan to create three boxes: one for myself, one for a staff from La Follette High School, and another for another student from La Follette High School. These people will have items in their personal boxes that they believe represents them or something that is just generally important to them. I chose to create this because I found the boxes in the book to be very interesting. I loved how the boxes give readers a chance to know a little bit more about these characters and what’s really important to them or what represents them.

This project reflects my personal critical interpretation of the text because I chose to do my topic on the boxes and make my own definition of what the boxes meant in the book. This project for me is an experiment to know what a different variety of things represents others as a person.

Ezra Duane and Jay Davis
Cartography of Innocence: Mapping Loss
Multimedia narrative/3-D map
In our project, we hoped to convey one of the themes in the book of being lost, particularly with the children losing their innocence as the story progresses. Being exposed to jarring events such as their found family separating and learning of the harrowing issues in the world around them including the harsh reality of the immigration system in America and the death of Manuela’s daughters heavily contributed to this loss. We elected to use a map because of its status as a recurring object in the story. We felt it would illustrate the progress of their journey away from the safety of their home and family up until the end of the story where they are forced to leave each other and become independent, giving away their innocence once more.

Zevyn Goosens
The Problem With Immigration Detention Centers
Infographic
For my project, I am creating an informative graphic regarding the state of the immigration detention system in the US. I was inspired by the book’s description of children being held in detention centers and the difficulty the parents had legally to help their children. The quality of detention centers has been a problem in our country for decades and due to recent changes within our government the process of detention centers has improved but there are still glaring issues with the system. In the book Manuela resorted to a coyote to bring her children across the border because she wasn’t able to with the current system. Because of this she and her children are separated from each other and Manuela doesn’t have the resources to help them. This helps show the problem with our current system and how it affects people. We plan to share more stories like this in our project and discuss the ethics and morality of keeping children in detention centers.

Jonathan Paulino Perez, Rocky Thao, Kenshin Thao, Parker Thao, Jayden Yang
Box of the Lost
Diorama
In this project, we created a Box Diorama that conveys the message of Lost Children Archive. We were inspired by the topic of Lost Children being brought up in the book and used this to create a project that helps show the different stories and perspectives that appeared inside of the novel. We created landscapes that were introduced in the novel and helped play a part in each character’s development and perspectives, which made us feel like we should highlight these events that helped our characters find themselves throughout the book. This novel shows the harsh reality of child neglect, the harsh reality of immigration on its own, and the colonization of different tribes. We hope to create a project that helps portray the topic of Lost Children as well as present the harsh reality of different world problems with landscape art.

Evian Del Barrio
Canyon of Stories
Book Nook
My project is a book nook featuring my interpretation of Echo Canyon. The walls are decorated with memorabilia representing the different interests and professions of the mom and dad and also symbolizes how what they’ve taken an interest in is also separating them. The book nook also showcases a train, a very prevalent symbol in the book as it is one of the many things the lost children had to use on their journeys. As it is a book nook, several books talked about are present around the book nook, such as Lord of the Flies and The Elegies.

Jack Boswell
Journey Train
Painting with acrylic paints
My project is a painting that depicts Echo Canyon, where Memphis and Swift Feather reunite with their parents. The train represents how Memphis and Swift Feather’s journey is connected to the elegy children’s and Geronimo and the native Americans. Each of them are at the end of their respective journeys, with the native Americans unfortunately headed to Florida where they will be forced to stay. The elegy children approach the end of their journey with the crossing of the border. Finally, Memphis and Swift Feather are reunited with their parents in Echo Canyon. In the corner, hidden from the rest of the scene by a rock, are Manuela’s daughters’ dresses, signifying that their journey ended too soon because they could not ride the train.

Lucas Branzolewski
Movie Trailer for Lost Children Archive
Script
This text describes a movie trailer based on the book Lost Children Archive. The movie, in theory, includes 99% of the book’s chaotic thrillers and drama content. The challenges in creating this project included several problems. The first problem was that there was no desert around the filming location in Wisconsin. The second problem was that using a green screen was not preferred, as it can make the movie feel unnatural despite its history of overcoming many obstacles in film-making. However, the script for the trailer accurately depicts the vision of a professionally created film.

Tyler Brimm
Colorful Words
Redacted Poetry
My project is a collection of colorfully redacted poems created from pages in Lost Children Archive. I highlighted specific words that were meaningful to my life.

Sydney Burling
Who are the Unaccompanied Children?
Infographic
My project focuses on the many children that are crossing the US border everyday alone. I have provided insight on just how many children have to leave their own homes to seek a safer environment. Over 400,000 children have come to the US alone in the past three years. Children as young as six or seven are leaving a home that is no longer safe and traveling across countries. I used facts, statistics, and graphs to best show the story behind unaccompanied children.

Hunter Davies
Monica Vitti
Song/Vocal performance
For my project, I wrote and composed a song about the mother and the father’s relationship during the trip to the Apacheria, specifically the more turbulent and problematic parts of the relationship. The lyrics are inspired by the first half of the book, told by the mother’s perspective. I looked for places in the book that address their relationship and picked the parts that stood out to me the most in terms of topic and structure. The mentions of adultery in sections, “Peaks and Points” (pg. 52), “Order” (pg. 61), “Climax” (pg. 91), and “Dicks, Whiskey” (pg. 120) and the use of questions in each section are the most obvious influences of the song. I have annotated the lyrics with the meanings and the section of the book I quoted. I also took inspiration from multiple genres of music. The accompaniment is a mix of Funk and Rock and the vocals are a combination of the R&B and Neo-soul styles to symbolize the diversity of New York, which is the place their relationship started.

Zavi Davison
The Journey
Image Slide
My project is a small poster that represents Lost Children Archive with four images that are important in the book. I’ve included sketches that represent the journey of lost children through the novel. For example, I’ve included images of the different trains and the desert. These show the pain of being separated from family and how much suffering all of the children had to go through.

Aiden Donnelly
Playlist
Collection of Songs
My project is playlist made up of popular songs that fit the book. I chose songs that are meaningful and connect to Lost Children Archive in various ways.

Kate FitzGibbon and Ian Saylor
A History of Native American Removal
Binder Booklet
Our project is a collection of primary sources from different moments in history from different perspectives including Native American points of view. We have collected documents from Colonial times, the Indian Removal Act, the Plains War, and modern issues. We have included maps to visually represent Native American removal throughout time. We have also found connections in all of these events to the topics discussed in Lost Children Archive.

Norah FitzGibbon
Lost
Painting
I have created a painting which exemplifies the topic of being lost that can be seen in the Lost Children Archive. I was really inspired by the imagery and symbolism surrounding this topic in the novel. The painting consists of outlines of Swift Feather and Memphis floating in outer space. They are surrounded by items from the book which they lost along their journey, or which represent loss. There are also quotes from the novel floating around them which contribute to the topic about being lost. The entire painting is created using eight 7×5 canvases, arranged into rows of two and four. The middle two canvases, depicting Memphis and Swift Feather, remain joined together, symbolizing Swift Feather’s promise that he will never be separated from Memphis. The other six canvases are spread apart, another way of symbolizing loss.

Silas Frandy
The Lac Du Flambeau Interviews
Audio Interview
The Flambeau interviews highlight Wisconsin indigenous culture through a sit down interview with an established member of the Lac Du Flambeau reservation and canoe builder, Wayne Valliere. The interview highlights the recent and distant history of the Lac Du Flambeau reservation and how Wisconsin native culture has been affected by legislation, outside influences, and the passage of time. Lake Superior Chippewa culture is alive and well, and the interview will focus on the preservation and survival of a current culture, not documenting a cultural fixture of the past.

Addison Gardner
Train Ride
Drawing
My project is a combination of all the different stories we follow as readers throughout the book. Manuela’s daughters are on top of the gondola that the children from the Lost Elegies book would’ve ridden with Chief Cochise and Geronimo. Swift Feather and Memphis are following after them, trying to catch up to join the “lost” train ride. This is a visual representation of the quote, “Everyone leaves, if they need to, if they can, or if they have to.” All of the characters shown in this piece were “lost.”

Faith Godsey and Ayla Buth
The Many Cityscapes of the Lost Children Archive
Magazine
For our project, we created a magazine displaying the path followed by ma, pa, the boy, and the girl. Each page contains different pieces of information, including restaurants, tourist attractions, hotels, and other fun facts. What makes our project unique is each page has a certain color combination which correlates to the family dynamic and many emotions happening at these particular points in the book. In order to do this, we researched the psychology of colors and the meaning behind each color.

Jeanne Green
The Silence
Model
My project is a model comparing two quotes from the book. Both quotes involve the notion of silence. The model shows how I interpreted both quotes as well as how I related them to each other.

Sophia Guerrero and Hallie Egelseer
Lost Children Archive (from the archive) (taylor’s version)
Playlist/Poster Board
For our project we chose songs from Taylor Swift’s discography that represent and relate to the traits and character arcs of the mother, the father, the girl, the boy, and the lost children from both the book and the children lost from the real issues in today’s society. We made the playlist through Spotify and annotated each song to show how it relates to the character. Our poster board features an interactive flip book that shows both the song and its annotations side by side, with a code above the book for viewers to scan allowing them to listen to the playlist.

Allistar Horwatich
Atlas
Artwork
My project entails hand drawn pictures, depicting important locations, elements, and landmarks through Lost Children Archive. I aimed to create visuals of the novel by connecting the path followed throughout the story to important cardinals mentioned within the book. I focused on working in historical elements of each location between each drawing.

Quentin Jewell, Jose Ramos, and Montana Walker
The Symbolism of LCA
Prezi Presentation
Our project shows how the family changed because of their experiences. We have showcased various items that symbolize events in the book which influenced the characters and their relationships. One example is the little red book, alongside a short explanation of its symbolic values. We photoshopped the different items important to the story into the back of a Volvo trunk and went into further detail on our Prezi document.

Marcos Jimenez Hernandez, Eliezer Mendez Lucena, Natasha Ramos Rojas, and Jeivy Martinez
Voices from the border
Interview/collage/wall map
In our project we try to contrast the negative media voices about immigration from the book Lost Children Archive and some real media voices, with the true voices of some migrants, their real stories, as well as the reasons why they migrated to the US. The testimonies are real, they were obtained through interviews in the month of February/March 2024. The testimonies reflect the experiences of migrants from Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico. They present themselves anonymously with generic names such as the woman & the girl, the woman & the boy, the boys, and the man, not only to preserve the identity of migrants but also so that people can identify with these stories, as we believe this happens with the characters in Luiselli’s book. The interviews are presented with a mirror in which the reader can reflect while reading them, this is to represent the humane, the empathy, and any other feelings or any interaction that each reader might experience. We presented all this in a map with information/facts of Latin American borders.

En nuestro proyecto tratamos de contraponer las voces negativas de los medios del libro Desierto Sonoro y algunas voces de medios reales con las verdaderas voces de algunos migrantes, sus historias reales, así como las razones por la cuales emigraron a los EEUU. Los testimonios son reales, se obtuvieron a través de entrevistas en el mes de febrero/marzo de 2024. Los testimonios reflejan las vivencias de migrantes de Colombia, Guatemala y México. Se presentan anónimamente con nombres genéricos cómo la mujer y la niña, la mujer y el niño, los niños y el hombre, no sólo para preservar la identidad de los migrantes, sino también para que las personas puedan identificarse con estas historias, como también creemos que pasa esto con los personajes del libro de Luiselli. Las entrevistas son presentadas con un espejo en el cual el lector puede reflejarse mientras las lee, esto es para representar lo humano, la empatía, y cualquier otro sentimiento o cualquier otra interacción que el lector podría experimentar. Presentamos todo esto en un mapa con información y datos de las fronteras latinoamericanas.

Ava Kleinfeldt
Lost but Never Found
Art Canvas/Collage
For my project I have created collages on mini canvases, each representing one of the sixteen elegies. The images within each collage depict scenes and important events or emotions that were shown in that elegy. Additionally, each canvas contains bits of recent news articles addressing the ongoing border crisis. When the canvases are put together in order (1-16) from left to right the news clippings formulate the letters L-O-S-T, spelling out the word Lost, surrounded by images from each elegy. I chose this format for my project to bring the elegies to life, in images, while also relating what these fictional children in the elegies are going through to the struggles immigrant children are facing at the border currently. The majority of the images and articles that I selected are from the modern day border crisis because I wanted to emphasize the connection between the fictional stories read in the novel and the current similar crisis.

Easton Klinzing-Hendrickson
Echo Canyon Wildlife
Booklet
There are a lot of different animals to see while you are driving in Arizona. I made a booklet about Echo Canyon in Arizona. This is one place the family stops at on their road trip. To create this, I researched the animals in Echo Canyon. My goal is to let people know about the different wildlife you can see. I connected with the book by using the sounds of the animals like the dad focuses on and the photographs of the animals that the older brother captures. I shared information about the different wildlife in this story and at Echo Canyon.

Olivia Klubertanz and Morgan Zastrow
A Keepsake Para Mis Hijas
Archive
Our project is a collection of tangible items that remind Manuela of her daughters. The box with the items signifies Manuela’s hope that she will be reunited with her daughters, and one day be able to show them the contents. The box includes a poem that expresses the deep sadness that Manuela feels from her daughters’ absence, a newspaper article about the detention centers crowded with migrant children, artwork created by her daughters before they were separated, handwritten cards to each daughter, most recent report cards, birth certificates, polaroid pictures she took to capture moments when her daughters were missing, little trinkets she bought for her girls, and quotes from the book that express how she is feeling.

Lucas Lambert, Tyler Patrick, and Tyson Pfeffer
Archives of the America’s
Podcast
We have created a podcast to better understand the stories of Manuela’s daughters, The Lost Children Elegies, and the media.  We felt an underlying theme in the story is desensitization to the lives of immigrants. An archive allows us to approach this problem from the third person and makes it easier to understand the stories of everyone. This podcast dives into the history of unstable countries to allow people to see the reasoning behind a person leaving their country. The podcast is 30 minutes long and connects these worldwide stories to the book of the Lost Children Archive.

Hemos creado un podcast para construir un mejor conocimiento de la historia de Manuela y sus hijas y muchas personas como ellos, también las noticias. Pensamos que el tema de la historia es la insensibilización.  Un archivo nos permite acercarnos al problema en tercera persona y hace que sea más fácil de entender las historias. El podcast trata sobre la historia de los países que no son estables para permitir a las personas conocer las razones por las que una persona se ve obligada a dejar su país. El podcast dura 30 minutos y conecta las historias con el libro.

Ricardo Martinez, Nathan Brzowski, Luis Lopez
The System / El Sistema
Short film/documentary
Our project goals are to inform about the topic of immigration/migration in the US. We also included connections in Valeria Luisellis book. We show and try to create awareness about the dangers in the system. Also the path that migrator/s have to take. The short film/documentary follows two fictional immigrants who venture from Mexico and Honduras respectively, to the United States. The story of these two will be intertwined with clips of interviews with the immigrants that they are based on. We will also have segments in the short film/documentary that explain the connection between the book, real life experiences, and the story of the fictional characters that we created.

Los objetivos de nuestro proyecto son informar sobre el tema de  inmigración/migración. También incluimos conexiones en el libro de Valeria Luiselli. También mostramos los peligros en el sistema y el camino que los migrantes tienen que tomar. El cortometraje/documental sigue a dos inmigrantes ficticios que se aventuran desde México y Honduras, respectivamente, a los Estados Unidos. La historia de estos dos se entrelaza con un clip de entrevista con los inmigrantes reales en los que se basan las historias ficticias del cortometraje. También tendremos segmentos en el cortometraje/documental que expliquen la conexión entre el libro, las experiencias de la vida real y la historia de los personajes de ficción que creamos.

Ryan Pappa
LCA’s Journey Visualized
Interactive Map
My project is an interactive map made on Microsoft Powerpoint that gives a rough idea on the route our four characters went through on their cross-country journey from New York to Arizona. Every state has a key location, rough ideas of them in actuality, that resemble those described in the book. Each place you visit will have a transition with a quote from the book and on the trip before zooming in on said location and giving a brief summary of it. Since some locations are more important than others to the plot, some will have more emphasis placed on them than others. I also included the place that the two kids went to: Echo Canyon. This is meant to represent an archive of memories; visual representations of the journey that the boy wished the girl to remember, the journey during their fleeting moments before being inevitably separated.

Alex Parys and Alex Breaker
Archive of Pins
Interactive Map
Our project focuses on the route of the main characters and their stops along the way, while tying in the theme of immigration. On top of this, we will display the immigration route prevalent in the book along with a current immigration story, and compare the two. We will give a short summary of each stop, and add a sewing pin on the map of where that place occurred along the family’s journey. Then, we will connect assorted colors of string to connect these pins. We will speak on each pin to add context and information. We hope that this will display the long journey of the characters in the book, while being able to compare it to the struggles prevalent in the immigration journey. While doing this, we will highlight the struggles of immigration and speak on how the system has failed them.

Nuestro proyecto se centra en la ruta de los personajes principales y sus visitas durante el camino, mientras incorporamos el tema de immigración. También, mostraremos la ruta de immigración predominante en el libro con una historia real de immigración. Daremos un corto resumen de todos las visitas, y pondremos un alfiler de costura en el mapa donde las visitas de la familia ocurrieron. Después, conectaremos diferentes colores de cuerda para conectar esos alfileres. Hablaremos sobre todos los alfileres. Esperamos que esto muestre el largo viaje en el libro de los personajes, y al mismo tiempo podamos compararlo con las problemáticas mayores durante los viajes de immigracion. Reflejaremos estos problemas de immigracion y cómo el sistema les falló.

Jackson Powell
Can you hear me?
Original music piece
For my project, I composed an original piece of music that would convey the same emotions that I felt while reading Lost Children Archive. It goes through the stressful beginning of a mother and father who are starting to miss the love they had for each other, and then to a more whimsical section when the book switches to the point of view of the boy. An important part of Lost Children Archive was the song Space Oddity by David Bowie. I incorporated parts of that into my piece, along with hints of traditional music from the Apaches and neighboring Native American tribes.

Josie Purisch
Lost Children Archive Movie Adaptation
Digital Art, Song and Character Analysis
For my project, I have created a movie poster, sound track, and character casting of The Lost Children Archive. I drew inspiration from different parts and artifacts featured in the book to create a poster that represents the aesthetics and ideas addressed in the story. I explained why I chose each song, comparing how different elements of the text and characters aligned with the lyrics and melody of the songs. I included when and why I would use each song in the movie adaptation. In my project, I wanted to draw comparisons between the book and songs in order to analyze and better understand the emotions of the characters and their dynamics with each other.

Carly Raczkiewicz
Memphis’ Lost Memories
Diary
My project is a diary written by Memphis as a 20 year old adult. In the diary Memphis is working with a therapist to recover lost memories of being lost in the desert by using hypnosis therapy strategies.

Gage Rettschlag, Marik Taylor, and Hunter Frohmader
Starting Five
Lineup Binder
We made a starting basketball lineup using the characters in the book that we think fit into the positions on the basketball court the best. We used the decisions they made in the book to put together a statistics line for each player on the team. For example, one of the players had two turnovers which converted to two immigrant children lost. We also used the characterization traits of the characters to match them up to real NBA players.

Seth Ritter
An LCA Playlist
Musical Playlist
Each song in this playlist represents another element or event from the book Lost Children Archive in chronological order. The six songs in part one represent the Mother’s perspective and hints at the Boy’s perspective, as perceived by the Mother. The eight songs in part two represent the boy realizing the reality of his parent’s relationship and the hopes he has for his younger sister. The five songs in part three represent the different thoughts and situations that happened in their travel through the desert. Finally, the two songs in part four represent the thoughts the boy gave his sister in the end.

Ray Schremp
The Box
Collection of Items
My project consists of multiple significant objects in a box from throughout the story that were in the book. Each item that I included was chosen specifically to encapsulate the theme and messages of the book and meanings of items used by the author.

Sys Skudlarczyk
Into The Mind of Swift Feather
Collage
This project is a collage made to represent Swift Feather’s character and journey, with his findings and pictures of things he values. You will see multiple locations he’s traveled through in the background, a photo of his sister, his hand drawn map, the camera he uses, lyrics to his favorite song, and a QR code of things I believe he would have recorded while he and his sister were out trying to find Manuela’s daughters. There are quotes from the book scattered on the collage with explanations of how they portray a trait that Swift Feather has. The collage from left to right goes in chronological order of when the events on their travels happened.

Liam Smith
Poems about The Lost Children Archive
Poetry Collection
My project is a collection of poems based around primarily the lost children’s experiences. The poems highlight the division of the two parents in the book. I utilized a variety of poetic structures and styles in order to capture the themes of the book.

Rayne Smyers
The Parallels
Photo Collage
A photo collage highlighting the similarities between the Indian Removal Act and immigration issues at the southern border of the United States. On the left are headlines and photos showcasing Native Americans and their forced migration, and on the right are photos of immigrants and headlines pertaining to the policy issues. On the bottom of the collage is a quote: “they’ll be removed, relocated, erased, because there’s no place for them in this vast empty country” (182) relating to both issues.

Robin Spransy
“They gave it to me while I was in the desert”
Bow & Arrow Mixed Media Collage Piece
My project is a mixed media sculpture/collage piece, utilizing quotes from the book. Part of this project is a toy bow and arrow from a dollar store, just like the bow and arrow that Memphis traded for in the book. The bow has scraps of paper hanging from string off of it, and these papers have quotes from the book on them.

Sydney Streich
When We Were Lost Children
Scrapbook
For my project I have created a scrapbook from Swift Feather’s point of view on the journey he and Memphis went on as lost children. I included all of the pictures Swift Feather took and some quotes from the book. This scrapbook highlights Swift Feather’s emotions and feelings during the trip.

Mackenzie Syvrud
Busy Bags for Memphis and Swift Feather
Collection of Items
I have assembled bags to occupy Memphis and Swift Feather while they are in the car, as this was a large portion of the setting. I made two separate bags, one for Memphis and one for Swift Feather. Swift Feather’s bag will have the two books Lord of the Flies, and Elegies for Lost Children (that I made) and his polaroid, itinerary, lightsaber, little cars, and kit (minus the knife for safety purposes) that is mentioned on p.31. Memphis will have The Book with No Pictures and a teddy bear, (p.61)/four squares, and a horse figurine.

Laina Tynan & Paige Jones
Memory Snapshots
Drawings and research
In our project, we created a visual representation of how memory forms differently for children of different ages. For the younger sister, her memories will be drawn blurry and blended, while with the older boy, his will be clearer and easier to interpret. We have two drawings for each child of the same memory, to help viewers visualize the comparison. We also added descriptions to show what scene this is from in the book. Finally, we included some research off to the side to explain why memory forms at a certain age and the science behind it.

Natalie Vega, Jackie Quechol-Mendoze y Frida Cabrera
Our Adventure / Nuestra aventura
Scrapbook/Diary
Our goal as a group is to create emotion and show the vulnerability of the characters in the book and their journeys while still using creativity. In order to connect to the topic of migration/immigration, in each page it shows correlation between the book and the recurring problems at the US and Mexican border. We also include in the book particular and significant objects of the memory of our families, and their migration trip to the US.

Nuestro objetivo como grupo es crear emoción y mostrar la vulnerabilidad de los personajes del libro y sus viajes mientras se sigue utilizando la creatividad. Para conectar con el tema de migración e inmigracion, en cada página se muestra la correlación entre el libro y los problemas recurrentes en la frontera entre los Estados Unidos y México. También incluimos objetos particulares y significativos de la memoria de nuestras familias y su viaje de migración hacia los EEUU.

Sydney Welch and Addison Roberts
“Words, words, words, where do you put them?” (pg. 256)
Posters
Our project consists of ten powerful quotes that we carefully chose and analyzed. In each analysis we made connections between elements in the book and the real world. The presentation of the quotes and their analyses are laid out on Polaroids representing the pictures that Swift Feather took with his camera. There are ten Polaroids in total, five per poster, covering a desert-like background. One poster shows the desert during the day to exhibit Swift Feather and Memphis’ journey into the desert, along with the family’s 1996 Volvo to symbolize how the whole journey began. The second poster shows the desert at night to illustrate when Swift Feather and Memphis had to sleep in the desert, and the two X’s signify the map Swift Feather made to represent Echo Canyon.

Emily Wollin, Emma Kulow, and Taylor Wollin
The Road Trip
Scrapbook
This scrapbook is showing all the adventures throughout the book Lost Children Archive. We are representing their road trip by showing key factors and events that happen along the way. Along with using polaroid pictures to show symbolism, we are showing how each character had an impact on their journey. Each member of their family will have their own polaroid picture to show their impact on the story. We are showing how the journey is different between the mom’s point of view and the boy’s point of view. We are showing how they both went about the road trip very differently and how it all led back to each other. The red book that came up a lot in the book shows a symbol of togetherness.

Sulhee Bzdusek and Sidney Donahue
The Collection
Model
Our idea is to recreate one of the boxes from the book. The box is covered in newspaper clippings with text related to immigration in the US. We put other relevant texts and symbols from the book in the box. Our project showcases a combination of all of the major ideas in the book.

Brooke Kramer and Lila Sonmez
Box VI
Box with information, writing from the girl’s perspective, and items of value for her character
This project, the girl’s box, contains the retelling of events from her perspective, symbolic materials, and demonstrations of her personality. This is a critical interpretation because understanding the context of who the girl is allows for a deeper understanding of the family and novel as a whole. The girl’s strong personality shies away from the spotlight in Lost Children Archive, despite its underlying imperative for further comprehension.

Annie McDonnell, Grant Shadman, Julia Neeno-Eckwall
Map
Map with other materials
For our project we’re using tacks, string, and a map to show the journey the family takes in Lost Children Archive and comparing it with journeys made by immigrants and indigenous people throughout history.

Chloe Schlueter
Cultural Mapping
Visual Art
To reflect the aspirations of the characters in The Lost Children Archive, I decided on a project that would use a process similar to the methods of documentation found in Luiselli’s novel to encapsulate an indefinite concept through an assortment of physical products. This project is an attempt to capture the essence of human experience and culture in Madison in its mundanity and excellence through the collection of photo, document, recording and other snippets of the city and the people within it.

Saffron Zahorik-Schultz and Hadley Russell
Sounds of a Weekend in Madison
Soundscape, website, visual representation (map)
Madison encapsulates a multitude of activities for its residents to enjoy. For our project, we recorded a soundscape of a weekend in Madison to document the popular melodies familiar yet often overlooked by its residents. Similar to the sounds captured by the narrator and her husband in Lost Children Archive, we strove to accurately capture sounds both concrete and obscure, like “Documentarians.”

Zephany Allen
Connections Between a Mother and a Son
Painting
My painting is based on the Mom and the Boy from “Lost Children Archives”, I decided to focus on the two main characters of the story. The quote “This is ground control speaking. Can you hear me?” That was said by the boy at the end of the story, was something that really spoke out to me and I really wanted to include it into my project. I think the repetition was something that really caught my attention. For the background I tried to incorporate the colors of the original cover of “Lost Children Archives” because I wanted to include some of the author’s choices so I wouldn’t completely drift away from the book entirely. As I was working on the painting, I came to a spot where I realized it looked empty. So to fill the voids that were left, I did a bit more research and Included a feather. I did this because the boy was addressed as “Swift feather” for his Apache name. For the rocket, when the mom and the boy were watching the plane that held the “lost children” the boy started to count down to one for a lift off and it reminded me of a rocket ship launch as it lifted off into space, ”Ten seconds. Arm launch vehicle ignition system check. Nine, eight, seven. Go for main engine start. And six, five, four. Common main engine start. Three, two, one, lift off…” so I added a rocket ship. I added details of a map because the mom is the one always giving directions and holding the map. It just seemed like the perfect way to fill in the empty space.

Margaret Goerlitz
Elegies for Lost Children Reenactment
Book
My project is a re-creation of the mother’s little red book, Elegies for Lost Children. It includes illustrations, re-creations of the mother’s notes, and a few re-creations of the boy’s polaroid pictures. In Lost Children Archive, reenactment and re-creation plays a huge role in the story. Upon witnessing the childrens’ re-creations, the mother states, “Maybe any understanding, especially historical understanding, requires some kind of reenactment of the past” (p 155). The children recreate what is happening in the world around them through their games. These games consist of a mix of Apache history, learned from their father, as well as what is happening to the children at the border, which they learned from their mother. Elegies for Lost Children also plays crucial roles in the story, from helping the mother figure out what she could do to help the lost children through her work, to helping the development of the boy’s polaroids. The book also creates a closer connection between mother and son, when his mother reads various chapters to him, as well as helping to fuel the boy’s imagination during the section Echo Canyon; the characters within Elegies for Lost Children come alive, whether in actuality or exclusively within Swift Feather’s mind. The physical copy of the book allows for the audience to “relive” the stories, while giving insight and a more personal experience with the mother’s red book.

Andi Haag
Lost In Translation
Painting
My project is a painting of the book cover with a silhouette of Taylor Swift on it. There are three paragraphs taped onto the painting that describe three of Swift’s songs that I thought resonate with the themes in the book very well. Taylor Swift is a huge influence in my life, and I’d often listened to her music as I was reading the novel. I felt as though the writing style in Lost Children Archive was very introspective and cryptic. The mother’s perspective delves into self loathing and altruistic thoughts, just as many of Swift’s songs do. I wasn’t sure exactly how to connect the two until the chapter Allegory. In this chapter, the family is at the bookstore, and the mother thinks to herself, “I have never asked a bookseller for a book recommendation. Disclosing desires and expectations to a stranger whose only connection to me is, in abstract, the book, seems too much like Catholic confession, if only a more intellectualized version of it.” At this point I realized I could connect the two because Taylor Swift notoriously has a song for every emotion and circumstance in life. As she went on to list different books she’d like to read about, which she was really just reflecting from her own life, I thought of different songs that go with her situation. And the best part? You don’t have to tell anyone what you want to hear and why, you can privately listen to her lyrical and melancholic poetry without the shame of the question why.

Madisyn Hansen
The Archives
Visual Art
My project is a visual demonstration of the many different boxes of archives seen throughout the story. The quote that evoked this idea was, “why is it that looking through someone’s things is always somehow so sad and also endearing, as if the deep fragility of their person becomes exposed in their absence, through their belongings?” Throughout the story, Luselli places a special emphasis on the boxes of archives that the family carries as they travel across the country. The items within the box all have relevance not only to the story, but to real life as well. Since the storyline might distract from the deep meaning that Luiselli places on these items, I decided to make a physical reference of these items to separate it from the story, so it could have a stronger impact on whoever views it. The archive that I put together includes many quotes, maps, and documents pulled straight from the book, but it also includes storyline references such as songs and brochures. I decided to combine both the story references and the separate archives because they both add so much value to the overall experience of the book, which I am replicating through my project. As the audience goes through the box, they will be exposed to the harsh reality of the lost childrens situation and the unique family dynamic that was built surrounding these truths.

Abby O’Bright
His world divided
Depiction of view diorama
My piece is based on the boy’s view of his family. I chose to pick the perspective of the boy because of how his mother described him in the novel, observant, thoughtful, and focused. In my project he is pictured as a silhouette observing the world with binoculars from space. As he is said to, “arrange all the chaos around him into a world.” I chose to make his world out of the members of his family: mom, dad, and sister. Each family member is on the same world but they are detached into different continents. The family members are separated to portray the idea of each one of them being “connected but yet distant.” When designing my project I made sure to give each continent a personality as if the continents had the characteristics of their characters. Each continent has a collage of pictures representing their characters and what they carry, mentally and physically. When one views my piece I want them to feel emotion as well as for them to form a connection. For example, on the sisters’ continent it will show viewers her innocence and her inquisitive nature. If looking at my project from an outside view one will see that it is contained inside of a “banker box”. This was specifically chosen to show how his family is a part of his archive. His history and story. I hope for my project to help one clearly see the family dynamics from the boy’s own perspective.

Dominick Piarulli
Echoes of the Boy and Girl
Visual Art
This piece illustrates the way I pictured Echo Canyon. I used a reference of a slot canyon and took inspiration from other digital artists to make a piece that implements my perspective and the symbolism of the book into the picture. I interpreted the echoes as an absence while the boy and the girl were in the canyon. “In the place where echoes are so clear that even if you whisper, your voice comes back the same way your face looks back at you when you stand in front of a perfectly smooth clean mirror.” The vastness of the canyon and the way the echoes bounce around the canyon and come back further demonstrate the kid’s feeling of absence. The kid’s relationship was strengthened by their trip. Contrary to the parents who grow further apart, the kids are held together because of their sibling bond. This shows the kids independence and the fact that their connection is not defined by their parents. My bond with my sister is very similar to this and is why I decided to include the siblings in the picture. When my parents got divorced the first thing she asked was if she would still be able to see me. This is how I picture the kid’s relationship as well; they’re not connected through their parents, but through each other.

Elizabeth Riddle
Illegal on Stolen Land: A Collage of The United States’ Legacy of Colonialism and Continued Deportation
Visual Collage and Written Accompaniment
Valeria Lusielli’s novel, Lost Children Archive, frequently alludes to the Apache nation – the last of the Indigenous Americans to succumb to the white-eyes’ encroachment – while detailing a narrative of migrant children who struggle across the U.S-Mexico border. The connection between the two is developed subconsciously by weaving between the narratives; both cultural groups endure oppression by the U.S government and suffer from the United States’ legacy of colonialism. As illustrated in the many headlines and poignant images of the collage, families are consistently torn apart at the U.S-Mexico border, asylum seekers are thrown back into dangerous border cities and countries from which they fled, migrants are detained on their ancestral lands, and Indigenous Americans still grieve from genocide and ethnic cleansing disguised as “assimilation”, all due to the simple fact that their cultures are different than the white-washed American ideal. As Valeria Luiselli writes, too often, nations and cultures that are “systematically abused” are branded as “barbaric peripher[ies] whose chaos and brownness threaten civilized white peace,” in an effort to justify the government’s exploitation while maintaining a facade of superiority. By creating a collage of photos of children on gondolas, clutching the bars of the border wall, a child’s forced transformation from long braids to a close crop, headlines on the humanitarian crisis at the border and the genocide of Idigenous Americans, the viewer is confronted by the corrupt history that the U.S has concealed through euphemisms and avoidance. The aim of my project is to highlight the parallels between Indigenous Americans and migrants through article headlines and photos, and expose the heinous irony of the United States’ exploitation of both, not only due to the blatant human rights’ violations, but as the land on which they deem others “illegal” is stolen – an illegal possession achieved through immoral means.

Indigo Shideler
Geronimo: From Memphis
Song
My project is a song from the perspective of the girl in Lost Children Archives. It references parts of the story directly, including a direct quote of the quoted poetry section from La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua. The stanza directly quoted is “Oigo el llorido del mar, el respiro de aire,” (I hear the cry [tears/rain] of the sea, the breath of the air) and in the poem the sea is analogous to the No Man’s Land that marks the Mexican-American border. In the song, this lyric links to how Memphis and her family are both subject to the divide that is the border and the divide between her parents. She is hearing the cry of the sea, and this is how she hears the world. In the song, the verse is extended; “Tu hablando con el rio, el sonido de tu mundo; el sonido pasado,” (Your talking with the river, the sound of your world, the sound of the past). This harkens back to the theme of echoes, and how Memphis perceives her parents’ recordings of the past and the river dividing them. The song also uses chord progressions and melodies from the song Space Oddity, which features as a throughline in the story between Swift Feather and Memphis. As Memphis is five years old throughout the story and remembers the events in the book through echoes and myriad pieces, the melody is incomplete and doesn’t exactly follow the original lyrics, diverging from verse to chorus to bridge in a single section. This is an attempt to put the audience in the position of Memphis, hearing the world as she does; in incomplete pieces and echoes.

Victoria Weber
Lost Innocence
Painting
My project is a painting based off of the scene of the boy reading The Lost Elegies on top of the train. The painting portrays the severity of the situation he is in currently. It is inspired by the quote “I had to be patient and not lose hope, and concentrate on reading about the lost children, with my flashlight, until the sun came back and my thoughts were not so dark and confused,” and the quote “on top of that boxcar in front of that diner, thinking maybe you were in there with those strangers, or maybe lost in the desert getting farther from me.” These two quotes help paint a picture of the fear and confusion he must have felt during this. The boy’s innocence shines through during this whole part. His language and actions portray just how young he is in a situation like this. The train compared to how small the boy is represents the loneliness of the boy, and the vast landscape represents the danger of the situation.

Kat Wege
What The World Can’t See
Poetry Scrapbook
My project consists of a series of scrapbook-style pages with their corresponding polaroids, along with a piece of personally-written poetry to complement. This particular project is inspired by the sheer amount of unfinished and unsaid thoughts the characters had to process throughout their journey in this novel. Their personal journey, not only as people, but with the end desire to create a project to bring light to a topic that is typically hidden in society. I felt the need to produce a creative writing piece as such came from a quote stating “Stories are a way of subtracting the future from the past, the only way of finding clarity in hindsight.” I found this quote as a motivator throughout my personal writing process because it allows the reader to understand that the way a story is told can entirely flip and change the moral of a story as a whole. My goal with this is to share my personal interpretation through a mix of physical and written media, similar to how Luiselli uses multiple forms of media within this novel. These pieces I’ve written are derived from ideas shown throughout the novel such as strained relationships between the mother and father, and uncovering the hidden truth about the children immigration crisis. My poems were written to represent the mental burden the mother is forced to carry because she has the fate of her children on her back throughout the major events enclosed in the book. I sincerely hope that this display portrays an introspective way of perceiving this novel and its difficult topics.

Shahrizah Shah Alam
Malaysia and Bangladesh Immigrants, Burma refugee
Drawing
This is a story about my grandmother. She is Rohingya and originally from Burma. She is a refugee in the country where she was born. She has had a difficult childhood as a result of a Burmese soldier killing a Rohingya Muslim. She went to Malaysia because her son was there, my father had a different tragic life going to Malaysia, my grandma somehow made it there in Malaysia, but she has nothing except her son who is married and has children in Malaysia. Her son has decided to move to the United States with his family in search of a better life and opportunities, but she is unable to accompany him due to a lack of documentation. Her son’s wife’s family has been looking after her since her son left Malaysia with his family.  She was unhappy in Malaysia, so she moved to Bangladesh to visit a friend. My father sent her money every couple of months as he could, and with the money her son sent, she decided she wanted to live in Saudi Arabia by trying to return to Malaysia without telling her son, but she was apprehended by soldiers and deported back to Bangladesh, where she has to live in a camp with no lights and is cold every night. She said it felt like she was in prison when we sometimes got to call her. She is now an immigrant in a refugee camp in Bangladesh.

Faridah Abu Bakar
Sufferings through war

Leslie Coley
Nature is beauty/danger
I wanted to show the beauty of nature immigrants might find as they travel through the Darien Gap. I thought it was interesting how a place of such scenic beauty could also be a place of so much suffering.

Cruz
Immigration is difficult for kids understand and see
Those that choose to believe that immigrant people are nothing more than a stain in their country that want nothing more than to reap the benefits that America can provide. However, that is not the case, most undocumented immigrants leave their home country because they don’t have many other options. Most people long for their home country for many reasons whether that’s a longing for family, culture, or the scenery that you can’t quite capture in a new place. It takes a lot of work to make something new into your own, something that you can plant your previous life and grow something new. The best way I can attempt to reach these people is to attempt to connect a similar feeling they’ve experienced and apply it to my message. It could bring a more sympathetic point of view out of ignorant individuals.

Lily E’Lon Edmond
Adios Mama
Song
For my project I wrote a song called, “Adios Mama”. The song starts out with a boy writing a letter to his mother, talking about how he is leaving home for a better life for him and his family. But when she finds the letter, it is already too late, and the boy had left in the night while everyone was asleep. The second part of the song talks about how brave the boy is as he chases his dream for more opportunities. I also wanted the song to be in Spanish just to add another challenge, but it is not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes. I hope you enjoy.

Kae-Cee Gonzalez
Famous Mexican Musicians, Artists, Scientists and Mathematicians
I don’t think it is fair that a lot of people who migrate from other countries have to do hard and sometimes unfair work because some people went to college and are very smart, or they owned businesses in their own country or were really famous there.

Shariyah Greene
The Uncertainty of My Journey
Mixed Media
I created this project to put the audience in the children’s point of view because it’s easy to hear about their riskful journeys, but it’s hard to understand what they’re emotionally going through. I created a poem that’s in the perspective of a teen boy who’s on a train alone. Hearing his perspective and seeing a train helps grab people’s attention, so that’s why I took that route. I turned my poem into an origami star to symbolize his desire to have an American dream and also because he’s a star for being able to handle such a traumatic experience.

Ashley Manthei
Only Pain will Take Care of Me
Animation
A small PMV/Animatic with (moving) abstract art as the background and emotion. A little boy is traveling through the desert and between each panel numbers & questions will be shown,  from the interviewer, and the little boy will be shown with his answers. But the little boy’s travel has come to an end once the obstacle comes in his way.

Arubai Nuru Mgoya
The American Toilet
When I immigrated to the United States, one of the noises that scared me most was the flushing of automatic toilets. In my piece the dark line represents the walls separating people from entering the United States, and the toilet symbolizes the scariness found once one arrives.

Tahyris l. Mojica Samo
The life for the emigration
My project is about nature having feelings just like immigrants like them, because there they import it from one place to another that is not their safe place, like emigrants have to go through bars at the border because they cry and They feel too but we have to keep in mind that they are human beings too.

Ner Way Ber Moo
Voices from the children
Musical Composition
I wrote a piano piece of 4 pages expressing 2 story. One fo the story was about a boy who is crossing the border and the process. In the end he sadly didn’t make it. My personal story was also there as I talked about how war can effect other and the leading point to immgration. I made the song expressing the peaxeful living condition in our home town until the military attacked us and forcing us to flee home. In the end my family had a chance to move to America. Is called the “voices from the children” because of the struggle from the kids and how many people only think about the older people but not the kids. I was going to call it “cries from the children” but I didn’t want to make it more depressing.

Marvey Rabanales-Ramirez
Papermation Migration
Documentary Video
My documentary is about my family’s “pull” to the United States. This documentary is presented in a papermation style and it’s meant to look as if a 10 year old had created it. This is because the story is being narrated by my mother’s memories from when she was 10 years of age. This showing includes a recording of me interviewing my mother and a narration done for my mom, by me.

Dystince Robertson
Song
I composed my song in the perspective of those who lost their lives immigrating, trying to make it back to their families. I imagine them wanting to communicate that they are sorry and that they traveled this journey to make it back to them.

Melina Sanchez
Rejected from an asylum
Drawing
I decided to do my project on how deportation has impacted many people, emotionally and physically. My drawing is of a women named Marcela, she had fled her home country Guatemala. She was seeking for help because she had been sexually assaulted in her home country. Instead she would be rejected and deported to somewhere she’d never been to before, placed in a truck with 250 people with no food at all.

Elisabeth Schulte
The Migrant’s Map
Painting
This painting depicts a map of Latin America, and has a few important details which stand out. These details are certain landmarks (cities, places, etc.) which pertain to the journey of a typical person immigrating to the United States of America. There are text bubbles containing numerical data about some of the landmarks too.

Ariah Trotter
The dress that Would Give a Second Chance
Dress
I decide to crochet a dress in out of the book ¨tell me how it ends it a dress the symbols the journey that a girl in the book went through and how they were able to make it to the untied states. On this dress you will find a note with a number on it i did that to symbolize that the girl had a number on her dress that she needed to give to people so that she could be with her mother once again.

Nina Walker
Go on
Painting
My piece will be a canvas painting with a 3D aspect. It will be showing a child going through a forest of some sort. Behind the child there will be like death and destruction. The canvas will be ripped and messed up. This will illustrate what the child sees and go through as they look for a better life. 

Meah Williams
Losing Hope
Digital Artwork
I made a digital piece talking about about how immigrants chooses or is forced to take the journey of immigration but then when they reach their destination they are being denied and treated illegal. The flower means flourishing hope growing then dying.

Javier Alvarez, Godard Mutond, Jacob Pierce, Daniel Harris
The Canvas of Immigration
Display of immigration experiences
For our project, we are interviewing people who immigrated to America to view different perspectives on their immigration experience. We will get these perspectives from families, coworkers, etc. and will collect them, as well as pictures and small mementos, to create a view similar to the boxes the characters from LCA had. We will also have a meter similar to those at the zoo to show how “hard” it is to immigrate from their previous location.

Caoilainn Brennan, Abigail Domena, and Maeggan Xiong
The Lost Children Archive: The Journey
Interactive Board Game
Our project encourages the audience to explore several key settings throughout the book Lost Children Archives via board game. At each landmark, players will stop by a checkpoint and receive a question relevant to a major motif found in the book. Participants may then respond with their own personal memory on a slip of paper. As they progress, players will be given more in-depth and challenging questions to reflect on, simulating the progressing complexity and difficulty of the journey experienced by the family. If desired, players can add their stories to a bulletin board at the end of the game to keep their echoes alive and tangible, similar to Swift Feather’s recording which keeps his echoes alive for Memphis.

Praseuth Chanhdara
The Effect of Resonance
Paper Model
A model of the desert/canyon in LCA showing how the echoes demonstrate how individual stories are connected in multiple ways and how they help a larger narrative of human experience and history.

Jeremiah Everett, Janet Medel, Saniya Sanders, Saniya Simmons, and Maya Conrad
Things left behind
A model of a Volkswagen representing the way that the family moved and showing how much they left behind
Our project illustrates: How much the family traveled and the amount of times they had to leave important parts of their life behind. For instance, the children left their friends, school, and growth behind while the parents left comfort and assurance because they had to keep doing their project along with doing their own separate projects.

Samuel Forgie
Echo Canyon
Scale model of Echo Canyon
The scale model of Echo Canyon is intended to represent the loneliness of being lost.

Samuel Gagnier, Logan Williams, Diego Beissel
Music in Children’s Hearts
Music
Our project utilizes various riffs from songs about loneliness and songs utilizing echoes in order to explain ways that echoes uncover what was once lost or what was trying to be hidden. It uses specific quotes from the book talking about echoes and their purpose of representing something that was lost, whether it be purpose or history. Altogether, the music serves to highlight the importance of history through the echoes of those once lost, and establish a purpose in history going forward.

Evelyn Geier and Moxxie Kurek
The Name Claim
Tri-fold board presentation + Audience Participation
Our project explores how the Apache tribes named themselves, much like the main characters in Lost Children Archive named themselves with the naming conventions of the Apache. Using research from accredited Apache resources, this project dives into the aforementioned naming conventions, and also provides an opportunity for those viewing the presentation to give themselves a name that connects to them or represents a part of them, like the family in the novel. Every name will be recorded and each person will be given a name tag to wear throughout the day.

Merrigan Holzer, Shaelin Kendall, and Cally Hensersky
Placeholder
Interactive collection of memories in the forms of pictures, objects, and written stories
Throughout the novel the motif of echoes repeatedly appears which our group really connected with. We associated them with memories, which are echoes of moments, lifetimes, and experiences. Memories can change and deteriorate with time, the same way an echo gets weaker and weaker the further it travels. Inside of the three boxes are different forms of memories. One holds pictures collected from our lives as well as a polaroid camera which allows the participant to add a picture to the collection. The second is filled with written memories and blank notecards. Like the previous box the participant can add their own written memory to the pile. The final box is filled with objects and mementos that are echoes of our past selves, phases, or ages. After time all we are left with is key points of our lives. The details fade away just like echoes.

Rachel Pollock & Preston Meyer
Zugzwang
Multimedia sculpture and interactive chess game
The sculpture presents the conflict between migrants and the United States as an entity as a fixed game of chess, where migrants seeking protection are on one side of the board (all as pawns), and the United States (all the non-pawn pieces) takes the other side, which is being “guarded” by a looming vulture masquerading as an eagle. The fixed chess match depicts the hopelessness of the migration to the United States and the migrants’ seemingly futile perseverance, and the vulture’s masquerade as an eagle illustrates the United States’ illusory outward image of freedom. The interactive chess match will involve participants playing as migrants, only being allowed to use pawn pieces, and playing against the United States, which will be able to use all pieces other than pawns. This is designed for the participant to experience the frustration and despair of playing a game you’re destined to lose. The project’s title, Zugzwang, describes when one is forced to make a disadvantageous move in chess.

Daivon Smith
The Flip Side
Likely a large sheet with information which contains a retrospective that tackles how psychology plays a part. Or just a piece of paper that holds my essay that showcases what I said above.
My project utilizes Psychological devices and strategies, which will then be used to make connections within the Book that pertains to the theme. I attempt to combine fiction and non-fiction to create a broad perspective that helps you understand the nuance of the story.

Lorelei Wesselowski, Hanna Nelson, Sophie Gagnier, Bekah Sachs
Found February Archives
Collection of film photos and knickknacks
We are hoping to achieve a similar emotional response and preservation or experience as swift feathers Polaroid dedicated to Memphis. All four of us, in the month of February, documented a highlight of our day in the form of a film image, which we are now in the process of developing. Additionally, similar to how they brought empty boxes to fill with new memories, we each are filling a box with our memories of February, hoping to present a similar gift as swift feather to Memphis, rather from us to the audience. Regarding engagement, we will be providing an additional, empty, box that will be filled with slips of paper that our audience will fill with a memory they hope to preserve as well.

John Yang and John Gonzalez
Color Perspectives
TriBoard Project
We will be conducting this project by using two main colors within one drawing and with the use of a red and blue pair of glasses, the viewer will be able to see two separate drawings within one. We have decided to do this project because it will reflect how multiple points of view help bring one story together. Our goal is to show different perspectives in the book while still being in the same drawing, like both stories of the family taking a road trip and the children migrating from México to the United States.

Shawn Ard, Aiden Noth, Owen Peak
Are The Parents’ Careers The Cause Of The Family’s Issues?
Tri-Fold Board
This project explores what is causing the rift between the members of the family (mainly the man and woman).

Meghan Goeb, Dayton Oens
Places On The Map
Tri-Fold Board
The project explores the significance of the places the family stops at on their road trip.

Marcus Hansen, Isabella Brandt, Arias Lang
Three Themes
Tri-Fold Board
Three dioramas explore three different but connected themes in the novel.

Taylor Jackson and Addison Kunferman
Content Censorship and a Young Child’s Mind
Tri-Fold Board
During our time reading Lost Children Archive, we questioned the parent’s choices in the content they exposed their young children to. This led us to choose content censorship as the topic of our project.

Ava Kiesling, Elizaveta Kovalev, Hannah Hunkins
Are The Parents Good Parents?
Tri-Fold Board
The project explores questions about how the parents in the story treat and raise their children.

Angelina McNally, Celeste Coller, and Chloe Rubel-Healy
The Seven Boxes
Diorama and Tri-fold
When we first read Lost Children Archive, we were confused and unsure of where the storyline was headed. It was really interesting having the two contrasting narrators for the book and it gave us a different perspective on the different events. We didn’t know much about the immigration crisis and after reading the book, our eyes were opened to those issues. The boxes and visually seeing what the items each person brought helped us to understand the characters and their personalities more. It especially helped us to see more into the father’s eyes since it didn’t mention his thoughts at all throughout the book.

Ava Nielsen, Brianna Hendricks
The Woman’s Diary
Diary
While we were reading the book Lost Children Archive, there were clearly some family issues that were going on, and we were both wondering how your parenting could affect your children. We also picked this to be part of our question because we think people along with us would be interested in seeing the outcome of certain parenting techniques. We went back into the book to find specific quotes from the mother, long with details that helped explain the story. For example, while we were working on a diary entry, we didn’t know the details in which the parents were traveling when they were looking for their children. In doing so, it made us more aware of many things that happened in the book. When you read something for the first time there’s a huge possibility that you’ll miss a lot of details, so reading it again was helpful.

Addisyn Schumer, Syvanna Schumer
Dear Lucky Arrow and Papa Cochise
Letter
This is a letter written from the perspective of a reader to the parents in the book. It explores parenting styles and the impact that the parents are having on their children.

Blaise Texley
What Happens To The Minors Once Deported?
Tri-Fold Board
This project focuses on questions around immigration, specifically the issues unaccompanied children encounter.

Magnus Wyman, Knoxious Rheam, Jadyn Ashlin
Lost Children Archive: How do children cope with and interpret concepts with foreign scenarios?
Tri-Fold Board
When we read Lost Children Archive, we noticed how the children reacted and interpreted situations they were put in, which got us thinking about how children experience other scenarios.

Leen Alnejaimi
The Lost Aliens
Framed Cartoon Pencil Drawings (Table top)
alien (noun): a hypothetical or fictional being from another world 

The government calls immigrants coming from South America “illegal aliens” to dehumanize them. Author Valeria Luiselli highlights this fact and the play on words by having her fictional family visit the UFO Museum. My drawing shows the irony of the book’s use of the word ‘alien’ and shows why this euphemism should not be used to describe human beings running in terror from their homelands.

Yazan Alnejaimi and Kyle Zhao
Lemon
Clay Sculpture & Stones, Interactive Performance Art (Table top)
This project is about the divorce of the parents of the book and how their marriage is terrible and chips away slowly but surely. We created  two clay sculpture figurines meant to represent the “mama” and “papa” of this story showing affection, because that is how they started out in the relationship. Because we wanted to create an interactive piece, we will have conference goers drop stones on the couple to represent how small little things can chip away at a relationship. We have different buckets full of rocks that are color coded and at the conclusion of our presentation time, we will add them up to see what people assume the leading cause of their split may have been.

Amaya Andrews, Kai Killian and Leila Rosenblatt
Reflection of the Lost
Tri-fold poster board painting, stickers, mirror
Our poster depicts the “boy” and “girl,” with the foreshadowing of the quote about getting lost in the desert from page 217.  Ours is a more simple yet interpretive  project. We have used an oval mirror on which a poem is written about the children’s harrowing journey in the desert. Conference guests can look into the mirror while reading the poem and see a reflection of themselves as they consider the dangers the boy and the girl faced as well as that of all of the lost children faced on their journey. Considering themselves in the mirror, they can ask, “Am I lost?”

Don Beamon & Isaiah Dingman
Sanctuary Cities Map and the Dangers of None
Painting with printed media on canvas
Valeria Luiselli’s story sheds light on how people in Mexico risk their lives to get to America and “live the dream” that is advertised to the world. This journey is filled with risks such as women having a 7 out of 10 chance of being raped, children being separated from their parents or being killed by falling off the train or getting lost in the desert. Because of these enormous risks, we were curious to investigate how many people actually make it to the United States. The map shows the United States and the bloodshed that occurs when people risk everything to cross the border in search of a new life.

Syrus Bratchett, Alijah Newton, and Gray Hruska
La Bestia
Diorama
We have recreated a scene from the book that portrays the train as it hurdles through the jungle with children hanging onto the top. This was the most horrific part of the book, reading what the children had to go through as they risked their lives hanging onto the moving train. We also  chose to include selected quotes from the book that speak to that horror.

Gray Hruska & Joaquim Saunders
River of Lost Children
Painted Mural on Board with Collage News Headlines and Photos
Our project sheds light on the horrific struggles that people fleeing from violence and oppression experience as they search for a better life in America. Many risk their lives and some lose them while crossing the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, Texas. We recreated this river as the center of our collage. Around the border of the river we have numerous headlines from various publications that depict all of the many real lost children caught up in this crisis that no American president has been able to successfully solve.

James Hudy
Vocal Ink
Tattoo
The phrase “Our mothers teach us to speak, and the world teaches us how to shut up” appears in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive and speaks to topics of silence, communication, and power relations in families and society.The novel examines the loss of agency and voice, especially from a child’s point of view. Echoing the concept in the statement, it explores how events and cultural systems affect people’s capacity to speak up or be heard. And It connects to my project with a tattoo as this quote symbolizes how our society attempts to silence voices within the United States and beyond its borders.

Mae Van den Kieboom and Caroline Garvin
A Postcard From the Road
Multimedia
The book Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luisella is focused around a family documenting stories of children coming to the United States from Mexico while doing a cross country trip. They document these “lost” children by echoes / sounds. The reason we picked postcards was because it is another form that people use to document experiences, specifically where they were. Postcards are a big form of communication used especially when people are on the road so we chose that to document their experiences. We are making our own stamps with symbols and themes of the story such as a car cause that was how they traveled, soundwaves and cds for the echoes and sounds of the lost children. Our project is interactive, people can read the post cards and the stamp prints will be on there and they can choose if they want to use the stamp on their hand.

Willow Munter, Zofia Mrozinski, Amy Black
Echoes
Multimedia
Photography, as a medium, is a method of documentation. This however, only contributes one more layer to what is already understood about the world. The photo of Geronimo that this project is based on documents the effects of colonialism on Indigenous peoples. By bringing it to a modern perspective, attention is brought to how the echo of history continues to affect the lives of people today through nationalism. This project utilizes materials such as plexiglass and steel, and mediums like etching, in hopes of cultivating a deeper understanding by making the viewer aware of the “echo” within every photograph.

Lochlan Steele
Worlds Torn Apart
Art Project/Pencil Drawing in Color
My colored pencil drawing embodies a migrant journey through a sketched representation, which takes place at the Darien Gap. A treacherous jungle located between Columbia and Panama, the Darien Gap is the path where tens of thousands of immigrants from countries around the world journey in hope of freedom and opportunity in the United States. My drawing takes us beyond the immediate, in-focus lens of border detainment in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, and leads us to see the path of immigration extend to countries far beyond Central America. Specifically, my drawing depicts the weakening grasp between an immigrant mother and her child, ultimately separating them physically along the treacherous path of the Darien Gap. It shows the struggle immigrant children face throughout their journey, only to be separated from their parents right as they take their final steps to achieving their vision; only to be torn away.

Ashlynn Anderson
Facets of Lost Children Archive
Mixed media blocks
Each wooden block portrays a member of the family, showing things that represent them in the book as well as the problems and concepts that the characters have. Every character displays a different conflict and situation that’s happening both in Lost Children Archive and in the real world, whether it’s immigration, forgotten history, or separating from family. The art on the cubes demonstrates the symbolism used to convey those problems and messages.

Jack Anderson
Avians in Native Mythology
An organized display of high-quality bird photographs, standing scrolls, and note sheets
In this project, I take a closer look into two birds that live in Wisconsin and have ties to Native American tales and stories, The Common Loon and The Great Horned Owl. This ties into Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli due to a topical relation with the native groups and figures depicted in the book, such as the Apache Tribe and Geronimo. Additionally, drawings and photographs of the aforementioned two birds are on display to show their physical features and traits to all viewers who are amidst discovering their deep ties to legend and lore from the pre-colonial era of our country.

AJ Berger, Drake Lauritch, Dorian Wilkinson, Ean Langkau, Elliott Kipp
Forgotten Echoes: Capturing Abandonment
Video and audio gallery; documentary
The project is a gallery of images and sounds extracted from abandoned structures. We photographed the outside and inside of the buildings and other structures, as well as gather sound recordings to capture the essence of abandonment. We used high-quality cameras, tripods, drones, microphones, and editing software to create the best possible presentation of our work.

Jacob Braun
LCA TTRPG
Table Top Role Playing Game
What I found interesting in the book was the theme of storytelling mentioned throughout. From the mom contemplating how to tell her kids stories to the use of different mediums used throughout such as archives and photos that all explore creative ways of storytelling. TTRPG are great ways of using collaborative storytelling in a way that is hard to find anywhere else. So I made this system with narrative and multiple themes from LCA in mind.

Damien Engelmann
Our World Turtle
3D model
My model’s based off the three-legged sea turtle (Calypso) scene towards the beginning of Lost Children Archive. Scraps and garbage make up around 90% of this model to show what we can make out of our surroundings. The Turtle represents our world and how we have destroyed it, not doing anything to change or heal it.

Veronica Fogleson
Box of Life
Diorama
I painted a shoe with white paint then painted flowers all over the box to match the colors on the book cover. Inside the box are memories of my life (photos of my life in the box along with a card my best friend made me for my 13th birthday and a card that the mom of the kids I babysat gave to me). The necklace I wore everyday of my freshman year and my baby blanket are also in the box. I made this box to represent the boxes in Lost Children Archive and filled it with the things I would want to take with me.

Campbell Gies
Immigration at Oshkosh North High School
Documentary
I interviewed the ESOL students at Oshkosh North to understand their story. I also interviewed the refugee resettlement office in Oshkosh on how I can create a better community/ environment for the new students.

Maelyn Gregory
Mapping LCA
Google map
My project shows where the family all went in the book. From the starting point in New York to the ending point in Echo Canyon. By hovering over each part you will find a short description that happened at every stop.

Ceshawn Hibbler
Tortoise Of The World
Clay model with lid
The tortoise is a strain of thoughts that connect the turtle Calypso from the Baltimore Aquarium referenced in the book. The tortoise plays into a belief in Iroquois mythology. In the legend it states, “when the pregnant Sky Woman fell from the floating island in the sky, down to the vast ocean underneath. Birds and fish already existed, and they helped Sky Woman create the Earth, by giving her soil to put on a giant turtle’s back.” This connects to the text through various quotes that have meaning to me as a reader that are written on small papers folded up on the interior of the jar.

Kaylee Jackson
Who Am I?
A Poetry piece placed on two gouache painted canvas written in italics calligraphy
The poetry piece was written to capture the mother’s feelings early on in the book as well as to show her in a way that I perceived. Earlier in the book I got the impression that the mother was unsure, that she knew without really understanding. As I was writing the piece, I let it be known that while she would be called a title like “mother,” she didn’t really understand it. The paint colors were chosen to show a representation of confusion and understanding as well as to capture the feeling of being unsteady.

Anastasia Lyngen
LCA Isolation
Acrylic Metallic painting
This project is an Acrylic painting that demonstrates how the main characters feel as if they do not belong in this world. According to these characters, being in America is similar to being on another planet. The main characters do not feel as if they belong there and everything feels new. I attempted to make the buildings look like ruins in an abandoned location.

Alexandria McDowell
Sketching Reality
Sketches on paper
I drew sketches of random people around school over several months. I wanted to archive the people I saw on a daily basis. In Lost Children Archive, the mother thinks about archives and the narratives people can make based on them. I wanted to get people to think about the lives of the NPC (non-playable characters) they encounter in school and give them more consideration as real people with stories. It’s up to each viewer to construe a narrative.

Kiley L. Musha
The Monument of Resilience
2 Piece Canvas Painting, Acrylic paint with add ons
What does the Statue of Liberty represent? Freedom. Right? Well what occurs if we flip the narrative. “The Monument of Resilience” is a two part acrylic painting that is in the shape of Lady Liberty with add ons that showcase multiple injustices on what it could feel like to become an immigrant in America. I laid out the main ideas. Now let your ideas wander while looking for all of the numerous symbols throughout “The Monument of Resilience.”

Kayli Olesen
A Polaroid Life
Photographs
“I documented for you, for the future. And that’s how I became a documentarist and a documentarian at the same time” (Luiselli 210). In the book, the son is given a Polaroid to take pictures of their trip. Throughout the book he struggles with working the camera correctly and what he should document. Towards the end he starts to document anything, big or small, for his little sister so she can remember the trip and him. Inspired by this, my project is to document things in my daily life using Polaroid pictures. Each photo shows some person, place, or thing important in my life. Viewers will create their own interpretations and inferences based on the photos.

Eliza Pickron
Change
Painting
This painting I made is about migration and general themes in the book. While making this painting I had in mind how it felt to read the book and emotions of the charterers in their journey.

Cadence Preston
So you’re moving?
Children’s Book
This is a children’s book that hopefully helps children understand the concept of moving and what it means for them. Whether it’s near or far, it can be a very confusing time for young children. This is based on the fact the in the Lost Children Archive featured two young children who were probably not very well informed on the trek they were about to partake in.

Emma Wara
Daily Acoustics
Record of sounds
In this video, I collected the sounds that I hear at my high school. This relates to the book because the jobs the mom and dad do in the book is that they recorded sounds, so I did their job essentially, and I got to experiment what they do.

Isabelle Berger, Kerrigan Kimball, Madelyn Ehlert, Leah Moen
Alien Children
Plaster Earth
Our project, “Alien Children,” is a plaster representation of Earth, along with a spaceship to bring light to the “alien kids” in the book. We used plaster to create the globe, which we then painted; we also used plaster to construct the spaceship, and painted that as well. Throughout the book, it continuously referred to alien children and the UFO museum that the children, especially the boy, wanted to see so badly. As inspiration we chose the quote, “The planes, full of ‘alien kids,’ will leave from an airport not far from the famous UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico. I’m not sure if when she says the words ‘alien kids’ and ‘UFO museum,’ she’s stressing the irony of it or is completely unaware of it.” (Luiselli 154). This quote talked about how the “alien kids” represented the children, and the UFO museum represented the holding centers those children were in, where they would eventually be deported back to their countries. For our project, we hoped to bring light to a dark situation, the children that go to these centers and are held there go through so much to make it that far, just to be deported right back to where they started. We wanted our project to show the importance of the issues that this book tries to address, we were aiming to illustrate the differences between how an immigrant is treated compared to the U.S. citizen and how we often tend to stereotype them in a negative way like as “alien”.

Aria Boehler
The Descent
Short story
“The Descent” is a short story that narrates the attempted migration of a Middle Eastern woman to Europe, a journey that begins with the unexplained disappearance of her husband but ultimately ends when the boat intended to take her across the Mediterranean capsizes. This short story offers reflection upon many of the topics that are explored in Lost Children Archive, including migration, loss, imbalance of power, and the impact that a story’s narrator has on the way that that tale is told. The short story is inspired by several passages of Luiselli’s work, as well as the overarching interaction of ideas and stories demonstrated throughout the book, but the sixteen migrant elegies, the boy’s description of the journey he and his sister make to Echo Canyon as they search for the lost children, and the woman’s reflection upon the persistence and purpose of love were especially influential of my piece. In the same way that Lost Children Archive strives to give a voice to individuals who are often reduced to statistics and political controversies in the context of immigration in the U.S., “The Descent” is an effort to represent and humanize the stories of migrants who make the similarly threatening voyage across the Mediterranean Sea in efforts to reach Europe, a journey that resulted in the death or disappearance of more than 2,500 migrants last year (Bowman).

Kayden Brandt
Finding the Lost
Comic
Finding the Lost is a series of comic frames that display the characters as animals such as a wolf, a raven, two rabbits and two coyotes. The reason for them being portrayed as animals is because when they’re humans, they’re just humans. However, if they are portrayed as animals, it shows their strengths and how they act more than if they were portrayed as humans. Within the drawing, I wanted to show off Swift Feather and Memphis finding the lost kids within the train cart and then show off Swift and Memphis’s journey towards Echo Canyon to show off how the story ends, with Swift Feather talking into the recorder, however, he’s on the verge crying. The reason I decided to make it to where Swift Feather is on the verge of tears is because it will portray the raw emotion we as people feel whenever we lose someone close to us. My interpretation that will be shown within Finding the Lost is all about hope. Hope is a big part of The Lost Children Archive, especially towards the end, where Swift Feather and Memphis find the lost kids, but then show off the hope of finding each other [Memphis and Swift Feather] once again when they’re older.

MaKaelyn Clark, Elaina Butz, Ava Pamer
Journey of the Family in The Lost Children Archive
Diagram
We wanted to represent the mother’s project on the lost children and how their life slowly turned into exactly what she was researching. Reading this we got the idea that the parents focused so much on their projects and their ideas that they had, their family faded away. They fought for each other as a family but eventually it wasn’t enough to keep them together. This diagram goes through the troubles and hardships that the family had to face and how even the kids had to fight for each other. The line that is down the middle of the entire diagram is to show the divide that was constantly there but no one really pays attention to, but it becomes more pronounced when they split up in the end. This project explains how the family started together and then as the story went on conflicts occurred which led to the split throughout the family. Although they came back together which is shown at Echo Canyon when they meet up as a family again. Shortly after that, they parted their separate ways, and the girls went to New York, and the boys went to Arizona.

Nora Clements, Piper Crawford
Lost Echoes
Board Game
Our project is a board game that follows the road trip of the family on their way to Echo Canyon. On their way in the book they take many pictures of their journey so this is incorporated in the final project as road markers that were inspired by the quote, “Everything that happened after I took the picture was also inside it, everything no one could see it”(Luiselli 200). The project uses pictures to show this by continuing to tell the story that happens after the photos are taken. In the book there are many setbacks that are also shown through the cards by making a player lose a turn or go back a certain amount of spaces. Different parts of the board represent different parts of the journey like the places they stay and memories that would have otherwise been lost to time. The different ways that the family travels are shown through the spaces. When the players are traveling by car they are on a road, when they are traveling by train they are on train tracks, and when they are traveling on foot there are footprints. The first person to make it to Echo Canyon is the winner.

Kiara Deppiesse, Audin Racine, Isla Fisher, Abby Marquissee
The Trip of Family Lexicon
Interactive map
We created a map that tells the story of all the places that the family traveled to throughout the book. We chose a map because it summarizes the overall journey that they took, and the hardships they faced together, the lessons they learned, and the eventual unity that brings them back together at the end. We used different colored tacks to pinpoint the exact locations of the family’s trip, and we used different colored strings to help represent the separation the children and parents experienced. Our project was inspired by the long expedition this family took, we noticed that there were so many places the family traveled to and it was getting hard to follow, this led us to creating a map of the entire venture. This implements clarity that allows each location to be articulated.

Hailey Knutson, Linsey Koslowski, Layla Leinen, Addy Elliott
Poster Polaroid
Poster
We made a poster board polaroid, which consists of a poster board made to look like a polaroid, and inside the polaroid we made the Echo Canyon, their car driving into the canyon, and the moving boxes placed in the back of their car. We chose to make this specific art piece because we felt as if it included many main parts of the book, and summed up a major part that was described in the book. The boxes were where many important books and recording items were, and also were significant because of how Luiselli put the box numbers as the chapters. This canyon also was very significant because it was where the two children met their parents again after they had been lost, as their parents always told them to meet them in Echo Canyon if they got lost. We chose to do it in a polaroid form because the little boy held his polaroid camera dearly and was always confused when the pictures came out cloudy, only to know that it had been exposed to the sun, and that it had to be in complete darkness to develop, which could be a great life lesson.

Trent Krueger, Reid Potter, Louisa Lang, and Marnie Grey
Push & Pull
Painting
The painting has a beast, plane, family, and a paper cup phone. The beast is for the figurative subject that is used when things aren’t going the kids way. An example of this is like the beast being in the middle of their parents’ relationship. This is why the beast is in between the parents. Another example is how the beast showed up when the lost children were getting deported, which the beast would be America and how America is taking them back to where they came from instead of letting them into America. The plane is the plane that took the lost children back. The family is the main part of this story and we show them separating because in the book, the parents leave each other. The family splitting up is why we put the paper cup phone in the painting. The children don’t want to leave each other, so the boy leaves polaroids and a voice recorder, which in this case is the boy talking to the girl with the paper cup phone to talk/keep in touch with the girl.

Archie Mugerauer, Sam Roblee, Carter Crowe, Gavin Steiner
Migrant Odyssey
Board Game
Our project is a board game that demonstrates the path that many immigrants take when crossing the border into America. It shows many of their struggles such as crossing the Rio Grande River, facing border patrol, dehydration, and heat stroke. The path on our board game reflects many of the problems that Immigrants could potentially face while moving to America such as the lost children in The Lost Children Archive. The purpose for our project is to call attention to the crisis at the US-Mexico border and the unfair treatment that many immigrants face while attempting to go to the United States. Also, the split in our paths represented the period of time that the children, known as Swift Feather and Memphis, became separated during their journey to Echo Canyon.

Sydnee Nelson, Nora Pakula, Maddalyn Meartz, Sam Dante
Adventures of the Lost Children
Diorama
Our project is represented through a diorama of a toy car and people which represents the family. The families cardboard boxes in the back seat to represent the parents’ obsession with their work made them forget about their own children who are in the very back of the car to show them being left out and forgotten. Finally we also made a road to represent their road trip throughout the story. We chose to do a diorama to show how the parents’ obsession with the lost children and the Apache stories took over their life, and made their own children become the lost children. In the diorama, the parents are in the front seat of the car, the boxes are in the back and the children are in the very back of the car because when you’re in the very back seats of the car you are often discluded in the conversation or not engaged in the what is happening with everyone up front. Our project shows that the children are “forgotten” due to their parents focusing more on their projects and how their children are not being included into their work lives making them feel invisible. A diorama fits our project best because it is a good representation of how the children are not being put first but rather their work is which is shown by the boxes being in the back seats and not the children. This is related to the text because, “even though those children were lost, we were not lost, we were right there, right there next to her” (Luiselli 208) demonstrates the importance of their parents ignoring them and making them feel like the lost children matter more than them. They were being dragged across the country for their parents to focus on work and the lost children, which is represented in our project through the car. Our project also relates to the text by emphasizing the neglect that the children experienced as their parents were more preoccupied with the Lost Children but their own children slowly became them.

Jacob Schaefer
The Tunnel of Past Echoes
Painted Tunnel
This creation shows the family of 4, Swift Feather, Memphis, Lucky Arrow, and Papa Cochise driving through a tunnel entering the Apache territory and having the mother and son yelling words that echo back to them differently than when they were yelled. “But the echoes we heard against the rocks that morning in the mountains were real” (Luiselli 228): The alterations of the echoes shone through this project are not depicted from the book The Lost Children Archive but more from myself.

Roman Stanuch, Gabriel Balcom, Camden Martin
Family in Turmoil
Choose your own Path Interactive Experience
Our project is an interactive experience that allows players to simulate making important family decisions similar to the decisions that the characters in Lost Children Archive must make. After making a decision, the player is then presented with the outcome where they will then decide what to do next. While reading, the aspect of Lost Children Archive that stood out to us the most was the difficult situation the family was in. The parents found themselves on diverging paths, and they had to decide whether they would follow those paths or if they would keep the family together. At the end of the novel, the parents decided to split, but we wondered what would have happened if they didn’t. This question was the inspiration for our project. We wanted to see what would happen to the family if they had made different decisions in the novel. Would they have a better future, or would things have been worse? After completing the project, we realized that the answer to that question was not straightforward. Nearly every choice in the project has both pros and cons, and sometimes it is unclear whether or not the right decision was made. Our goal with this project is to teach players that difficult decisions, especially when family is involved, must be carefully considered. No decision is perfect, and it requires a lot of thought to make good decisions in life.

Summer Zinsli, Bella Rabe, Kenzie Anderson, Aubrey Messerschimdt
You are never lost
Map
“You are never lost” is a representation of the lost children. The string represents how they may be far from their families but how they are all still connected. The hotel represents the place where the family was staying while the mountains show where the children had gotten lost. This project shows how the bond of the family was very important and it was strong no matter the conditions that they had faced. All in all, the book shows an example of how a family works even during the thick and thin, it also shows how bonds are such a special thing to have with other people and it should be cherished.

Carly Dahl
Melodies of Dysfunction
Music Arrangement and Saxophone solo
This saxophone solo of arranged music weaves songs from the novel into one melody. The songs include: “Highwayman,” “Paint It Black,” “Straight to Hell,” “With God on our Side,” and “Space Oddity.” During the journey in the car, every character plays at least one song they enjoy. The music is arranged in a way that demonstrates how their music choices show how different the characters are, along with their emotional distance from each other. Because of this, the name of my arranged piece is, “Melodies of Dysfunction.” After the songs symbolize each character, the “Space Oddity” melody ties the characters together. This represents the end of the novel when all of the characters start to understand each other a little more and come together in a spiritual sense, even though they end up separated. “Space Oddity” also expresses their longing to connect with each other.

Jaxon James
Map and Migration Stories
Map
This map and corresponding stories continue the mother’s work in the novel. It attempts to tell the real-life stories of people who crossed the border together. The primary focus is on unaccompanied minors who crossed the border and the stories of their journey to that point. Each story is summarized and color-coded to the map to make it easier to follow their routes. Each country has at least one corresponding story that can be traced on the map. This highlights the fact that this is happening to kids in large numbers.  It forces readers to follow along on their journey and to visualize how far they traveled to get to their destination.

Brogan Korger
The Lost Family’s Journey
Interactive Digital Map
This Google Earth interactive map shows the journeys of the novel’s family, along with that of Hispanic immigrants and the Apache peoples. The map helps the reader visualize the magnitude of what the children experience throughout the novel. The map includes a picture, quote, and description at each marked location from the book. It also includes facts about immigration and the Apaches at their respective marked locations.

Lillian Kufner
Lost in Your World
Map and Decorative Planets
This map incorporates the route the family takes in Lost Children Archive, and follows their journey from New York to New Mexico. The map highlights important events at the stops they take. While the family travels in the car, readers get to know each character. Each character possesses important issues that consume almost every waking moment of their lives. To represent each character’s personality and interests, each has been given their own planet. The planets contain pictures of their hobbies and what is most important to them.

Hayden Vold
Fate Carries Me
Artistic Backpack
This decorated backpack represents each of the characters’ experiences as well as what’s most important to them. The backpack itself signifies the only item refugees carry on their backs. Much like the refugees, the family members also carry uncertainty, hence the title “Fate Carries Me.” Each symbol draws a connection between the refugee children and the family while showing what most influenced the characters and what kind of significance it had on them. The mom’s symbols relate to the care she has for refugee children; the father’s represent the Apache tribe and a tape recorder display; the son’s symbolize not only intelligence but also vulnerability and the newfound reality he faces. Child-like symbols and items convey the daughter’s innocence and mischievousness.

Felicity Bobzien & Autumn Oliver
Immigrants Journey Illustrated
A mixed media art project that displays the elegies with descriptions
This is a mixed media trifold of the elegies from Lost Children Archive. The media includes pencils, pens, colored pencils, and markers. For each illustration we created, we summarized the part of the elegy we did and explained why we made the creative decisions within the art we made; these are printed and taped to the illustrations. Different media types and colors convey different emotions or meanings, like blue, sad, and red, angry; this is the foundation of the illustrations. We did eight of the sixteen elegies and picked the most important points in the elegy story and the most intriguing parts. The elegies are our favorite part of the book, so they were also a natural choice. They are essential to the story as they show the readers why the mother needs to help the lost children. They also help convey the struggles children crossing the border face and the hardships few people can imagine. We chose the elegies because they are one of the book’s most important and meaningful parts. They tell the story of the children the mother is concerned about and explain why she is concerned, and they are one of the most interesting.

Claire Dieckhoff & Gabrielle Richter
Children of the Storm: Alone Together
Fantasy, hand bound, Novelette
Our project is a reimagined story of the Boy and the Girl from “Lost Children Archive” as true Eagle Warriors. It follows them and two new children characters and explores themes and motifs from LCA, all through a middle-school-level fantasy lens. When we saw the mention of the Eagle Warriors within the novel, we immediately saw its potential for a story of its own. We decided to pursue this project because the overall “Lost Children Archive” concepts intrigued us, but we both wanted to explore those ideas in our own style. One idea that we really wanted to reinterpret was the concept of being “alone together.” In LCA, this phrase starts with the narrator and her husband feeling like they are alone in the world but can face against its challenges together, and the definition changes to mean that when they are together, they feel alone. In Children of the Storm, we chose to flip this progression to show how the four children’s relationships are strengthening as opposed to weakening. Once we wrote the story, we had to create a cover and research different bookbinding methods. In the end, we created the cover and side pages using Canva and bound our two copies of the novelette using the Coptic Stitch method. However, these versions cannot be easily read by people attending the conference, so we made a digital version of the book that conference attendees can view via QR code.

Lucas Gotz
How Americans Treat Migrants and Their Goods
A Digital poster that is printed
The third elegy inspired this Poster in the Lost Children Archive. The third elegy shares a story where a car crashed, and the people went after the goods rather than the people. When the looters eventually found out about the people, they were already long gone. This is important to the story because the fundamental topic is immigrants, and this story is an analogy to how America treats immigrants. I was amazed that products were put above people. However, then I realized that may be an everyday reality: America treats imported goods better than Migrants. Because of this newfound reality, I dug deeper into this terrible phenomenon. I created a poster—because of its simplicity and accessibility—that shows how America puts goods and materials above people’s lives. However, as I was reading through sources to gather information, I found myself disgusted at how we, as traditional Americans, treat this subject, but as well. It has become a project on racism rather than immigrants, which shows how intertwined the two subjects are. One project idea became another due to how reality nowadays tells of a troubled society. I also modeled the colors based on the front page of the book because this is what brought me to this project in the first place: Pale Orange, Purple, Coral, and then Red.

Logan Guenther
The Lost Children Archive Train Diorama
3D printed train
My project is a 3D-printed train made up of PLA filament. In the book Lost Children’s Archive, the lost children and the boy and girl ride a train. I chose the train because it was the book’s most influential setting and scene. The train is influential because it shows a real-life way of traveling for immigrants and the rough conditions. The train helps me understand the purpose and theme of the story. It was the most interesting part of the book, and the train was the primary setting during that time. All of the things immigrants had to go through were constantly moving, trying to get into America where they didn’t have to be oppressed anymore.

Braedin Haase & Mason Oliver Xavier Kane
The Great Literary Ensemble of the Lost and Dead
Literary Scrapbook
We collected media from different genres to show our interpretation of The Lost Children Archive. We archived them together to make a scrapbook-like collection of quotes, poems, songs, art, and other online and physical media. The reason we picked this project is to show other lost children in the media and around the United States and Mexican borders. We also chose this medium to put ourselves in the perspective of both documentarian and documentarist, like the boy at the end of the book wished to be. The two adult characters use different methods of documenting, yet from a literary standpoint, as archiving is a major part of the narrative, it is literally in the name of the text. These styles are described as “A documentarian is like a librarian, and a documentarist is like a chemist. But both of them did basically the same thing: they had to find sounds, record them, store them on tape, and then put them together in a way that told a story.” Throughout The Lost Children Archive, polaroid photos were shown after pieces of text; that is where we got the idea to include pictures in our literary scrapbook to give more of a visual representation instead of just words, turning thoughts into pictures so people can see and understand the things these children went through.

Adam Hedden
Comic Strips from the Boy’s Perspective
Comic Strips
For my project, I made comic book strips based on the boy’s perspective after he and the girl left their parents. The elegies are not included in this because I wanted to focus mainly on what the boy and his sister went through when they left. The elegies were really difficult for the boy to continue reading, so I also thought that to capture his experiences, I should just leave them out. The parts when the boy is the narrator are a lot more interesting than when the mother is the narrator because the mother is mainly focused on the same three things throughout the entire book, while the boy is focused on his own “journey,” which is why it stood out to me. So, through these comic strips, I tried to give more emotion to the reader by drawing pictures corresponding to his events. The pictures drawn show what the boy and girl encounter and whereabouts after they leave their parents. I’ve made 13 different pages that go from when the boy left to when the book ends (not including the part where the parents find out the kids left). The pages include at least 2-4 pictures on each page, and I drew what I thought was the most significant event happening then. Obviously, the events are all in chronological order according to the story, and as I said before, the only thing missing is the part where the parents can’t find the two kids, which I chose not to do. I did this project because I felt like the boy had a more important role in the story by finding the “lost children,” which he does near the end of the book. It also ties the elegies to the actual story, but I didn’t add the elegies to the comic strips because they never directly ran along with the actual story; they were more of an influential factor for the boy leaving with his sister.

Nate Lounsbury
Only the Jacket on Their Back
Patchwork Jacket
My project is a patchwork Jacket with four main sections outlining the changes of each character. How the characters change throughout the Lost Children Archive symbolizes how experiences develop our purpose and motivation toward life. Primarily, the boy seeks to keep his family together so severely that he leaves to accomplish her goal.  I used a jean jacket as the base and different fabrics to make each quarter of the jacket. The other fabrics and items are attached with fabric glue or by sewing. Each quarter of the jacket symbolizes the progression of a character and outlines their role throughout the story. For example, I used the inside of a beaten wallet—something that holds your identification cards—to show how identity can change and how the characters get lost mentally just as much as they do physically. The back of the jacket is an image of the border outlining how immigrants get lost and go missing; this part retells the elegies. I will use a series of torn fabrics to outline a picture of a degrading desert with lost items scattered around.  In addition to the desert scene, I used some imagery from the elegies to show how ruthless the world is to some immigrants. For example, I used fabric and loose torn pieces to show the loss of the older boy by having him scatter in the wind with torn fabric pieces. The back outlines how easily and often these immigrants go missing and how it impacts the people around them.

Jacqueline Luna Marquis
Their Tightly-Knit Expedition
Crocheted Diorama
My project consists of an old train that I hand-crocheted. On this train, I envision the scene where all the lost children and The Man in Charge boarded. The train is running with the five other children aboard; meanwhile, Boy Seven holds onto the edge, where The Man in Charge is following closely behind. It captures those heart-wrenching moments where we don’t know what happens to Boy Seven. I have the foliage and the vast desert creating the scene where I imagine this moment happened. It incorporates the fear these children face at the hands of others and the intense yet somehow enchanting environments they face. Some of them are huddled, while the others lie out of fear of falling. I have on one side the people holding food, and on the other side, people are holding rocks. This stayed with me because I couldn’t imagine all these kids faced. It was a horror that took me a while to really comprehend, and even after finishing the book, I still couldn’t have fully understood it.  I have such a stance in society; I am so lucky to see something so upfront in such an uncensored and intense scene; I couldn’t imagine it.

Emma McClain & Maddie Wallace
Elegies Storyboard
Mixed media
For our project, we created a storyboard for a graphic novel version of the elegies. Maddie created the storyboard for elegies 1-4 and 10-13. Emma created the storyboard for elegies 5-9 and 14-16. We did this all digitally on a Cursive program that came installed on our Chromebooks. We chose to do a storyboard because we originally wanted to create a graphic novel, but with our time constraints, a storyboard was more reasonable. The purpose of storyboarding the elegies in The Lost Children Archive for a future graphic novel adaptation is to give readers a visual perspective of the book. By creating a visual adaptation of the elegies, we allow the important story and message to reach a wider audience by providing an alternative way to read it. For example, some people prefer books with pictures because it makes it easier for them to comprehend and enjoy the story. Graphic novels also reduce the time it takes to read a book, meaning that people who do not have time to read a full novel can still enjoy the same story. We found the elegies important enough to storyboard them because there is not only a text-to-text connection to the mom and the elegies relating to her work but also the reality of the horrible circumstances children crossing the border have to experience.

Briana Meade & Camille Shepherd
Boxes of Memories
A physical representation of the archive boxes
The project was made to represent the individual archive boxes and each of the materials inside the boxes. These boxes interpret the text by representing the materials the family needed/wanted throughout their road trip. In a way, these materials reflect the family’s ideas, beliefs, personalities, and the work they put in for their occupations. These boxes share a glimpse of what the family is actually like. With the father’s four boxes, we see his organizational skills and the materials he reads for the project he is working on. He shows the characteristics of a documentarist, as we see being talked about in the book. In the mother’s box, we see her organizational skills as well, and she also shows the characteristics of being a documentarian, as seen in the book. In the children’s boxes, we see what they keep close to them and what is important to them. While they don’t get an official title of documentarian/documentarist in the book, we can only assume what they will become. The boy already shows signs of being both a documentarian and a documentarist, and the girl is still developing her own personality and not showing any signs of either. Each of the books in these boxes has a summarization of the title and a summarization of what the actual book is like. These books are created to represent how we tell the stories of the lost children whose stories remain unclear. This is important to the story because we must imagine the journey that each missing migrant goes through.

Dane Myszewski
Gondola
Metal multi-media sculpture
This project is a sculpture made of metal, and it is a train gondola (a train car). It is made out of spare metal I salvaged from different cars at scrap yards and scrap metal I had lying around. I used a welder and a “brazing” process to put this together. I chose brazing because it is an alternative to welding and is more commonly used on softer metals or finer projects. The Lost Children’s elegies were interesting to me because it was a time in the book when they never said where they were but referenced and described the environment often. Settings are crucial in stories because they allow people to immerse themselves in the story and feel like they are in it. The detailed description of the electronic setting allowed the readers to piece together an image of where they were, and that’s what I did with the metal for this project: I pieced it together to create a train car with a top and one with no top, which is a gondola.

Ava Wawroski
Lost and Found
Drawing/mixed media art piece
My project representing the book Lost Children Archive is half a drawing of the boy from the story and half an astronaut in space. The space setting represents the boy’s connection to the song “Space Oddity.” This song is crucial to the relationship between the boy and the girl because the theme discusses a main character lost in space and stuck forever, but he doesn’t seem to mind–this story shows the theme of the girl and boy. They may be lost in the desert, but as long as they have each other, they know they’ll be okay. The games they play give insight into the music they like, shaping the character. I’ve also incorporated musical themes within the border. The sheet music is of the previously mentioned song, Space Oddity. I hid words throughout the drawing. On the boy’s side, words are similar to the idea of being lost. On the astronaut’s side, the words demonstrate being found. The astronaut represents the girl. The boy hopes to reach out and catch the astronaut, just like he wants to keep being with the girl. The idea that he won’t be able to reach the astronaut is similar to how he won’t continue being with the girl, no matter how hard he tries. This is similar to the ideas in the song Space Oddity, which represents the same feeling of being lost. No matter what the astronaut does, he can’t go back home. The relationship between the boy and girl was a part of the book that resonated with me the most throughout the plot. The relationship’s ending contributed to the theme of how family and bonds can be forever, even though the two were worlds apart.

Jaiden Fingerson
The Psychological Effects of Violent Literature on Young Children’s Minds
Analysis paper
My project takes a psychological approach at analyzing the neglectful relationship between the parents and their children. It also examines the effects of violent literature and media on the children and potential consequences of it as they grow older.

Ethan Ruud
Ground Control to Major Tom
Analysis Paper
In this analysis, I dissected David Bowie’s hit song “Space Oddity”, and elaborated on the role it played in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive. The inclusion of this song throughout the text is significant, and the parallels seen when comparing the two texts reveal the symbolism the auditory work represents throughout the work.

Liam Baril
Interpretations
Multimedia Art Project / Tactile Interactive
My project focuses on interpretation. Interpretation is very important in this book as well as in real life. The author gives us the boxes and little to no context, leading us to interpret what each item means. This is the same with history. Even if you were there at an event your interpretation of that event will not be the same for everyone. I used paper and other objects to create the artifacts. I’ve laid these artifacts out in front of the four boxes. Participants decide where they belong and present unique interpretations.

Braxton Boksa & Breydon Peterson
The Political Side of the Border
Expanded and Sheet Steel
Our project is a representation of the way two different political parties would view the border and how it symbolizes our country. The expanded metal represents a more left wing view. The solid steel represents a more right wing view of our border. This is paralleled in the novel as the mother and the father appear to have different viewpoints on what is happening and should be happening with regards to immigration. The mother is attempting to find Manuela’s girls, is concerned about news from the border and is outright angry with the deportation of children on the plane at the end of Part I. She is like the expanded metal wall, always filtering the information and able to see what is occurring. The father on the other hand appears detached and although participates in recording the occasion, seems preoccupied with stories from the past and puts up an impermeable wall to the present situation.

Rylee Burnett & Chyanne Meacham
Story Told Through Song
Multimedia display
Lost Children Archive is a story within a story. Both stories talk about lost children in a scenario that is fairly similar. In the main story of this book, archiving is one of the main themes. The parent’s boxes have an array of things: tape recorders, maps, books, and pictures. The boy had this fascination with a camera that he claimed didn’t work. Various objects and archives pieced together create the story in the book. There were mentions of songs, different songs with separate moods and stories. We took all these songs and put them into a playlist and represent them in a box that is covered with the pages of the book. These songs are an archive. Each song selected has different meanings in relation to the book. Listening to the songs you can make out the profound meanings. Objects aren’t the only thing you can archive. You can archive anything.

Dennis Dehart & Dayton Rein
Immigration Wall
Multimedia Display
This is a border wall replica with a river running in it spray painted a sand color on Mexico’s side and then green grass on the United States’ side (the grass is greener on the other side). The river represents the river they have to cross to get to the USA. In the book, the river was keeping the kids that were trying to get to the U.S. out. It is very hard to get into the USA by sneaking in. Seven thousand people die trying to get to the USA each year. The sand on the other side represents the poor and desperate.

Nastadia Durski & Nevaeh Lopez
The Obstacle Courses
3D Model
We created an obstacle course that shows how hard it is for the immigrants to get past or even to the border. In the process of trying to make it to the border, they are faced with many challenges they have to travel through. This course represents the struggles they went through while trying to keep their families and belongings together. In the book when they saw the plane take off those children were most likely ripped away from their families to be put there. When they were crossing the road of trains and cars it was dangerous for them to be put in a situation where their lives were at risk. This course is a simulation trying to replicate that; struggles such as starvation, extreme temperatures and separation. The children in the book’s experiences are represented.

Alex Gensch & Jonny Heiser
Expectation vs Reality
Multimedia tri-fold display about life in America
We created a display illustrating the difference between the American dream and what America is. In the book, the father talks about America’s history in a bad light through his stories. Many people migrate to America to escape danger in their home countries. Although America seems safe from everything, we have our problems with violence, poverty, sickness, and drugs. Many migrants run into what they are running from. American citizens blame these problems on the migrants coming in. This is even represented in the book “These Children carry with them viruses that We Are Not Familiar with” (Luiselli 124). If we close off the borders will we become safer as a country or will we die off due to a lack of people and supplies coming in?

Amber Higley
War Immigration & Archiving
Multimedia Scrapbook
For my project, I challenged myself by creating a scrapbook encompassing old photographs and newspaper clippings. I dyed old newspaper articles with coffee to age them, collected personal family photos, and archived stories. My objective was to capture time in this book. I didn’t want time to travel like the theme in the book. I focused on what it means to archive, and how we can leave a legacy with documentation. I also explored immigration throughout history in these stories. I left one page empty at the end, as if the old lady who created the scrapbook intended to achieve something before she died – but didn’t get the chance to.

Sawyer Hollis
Context of Stories
Interactive Storytelling
My project uses a variety of different objects and pictures to tell stories of people. Students and staff were recorded rearranging the items and telling the story of the person they belonged to. Using this collection of clothing, pictures, and jewelry, I have created an archive and potential story of an immigrant’s journey into the United States. By mirroring the boy in the book, I used a Polaroid camera to take a few of my own images, as well using supplemented thrifted photos and clothing to construct the bulk of my items.

Benjamin Letsinger & Hayden Pusich
The Wall
3D Multimedia Art – Welded & Printed Media
The project represents the United States and Mexico and how they are on the same land but yet divided by a border. One side of the wall is painted white which is the side that the United States is on. We see it as a good thing keeping people out that are coming in illegally and we do not pay attention to it quite like Mexico does. It is just something there while for Mexicans it is an obstacle. The other side is rusted as intimidation and kind of scary and seemingly impossible to get over and that it has been there for a long time and won’t be moving.

Tanner Romaker and Charles Walloch
“The American Dream”
Foldable Wall Portrait Display
Our project uses visual landscape art to display an immigrant’s perspective of the “American Dream” and what they view of America before crossing the border. It is a satire of what America really is like and shows the country’s imperfections behind the scenes. We used a tri fold and cut it up to create a foldable portrait where it looks like you’re standing looking at the wall in the distance. We then sketched out the drawing and colored it with markers. This connects to the immigration themes in the book like with the lost children elegies, many people attempt to go to America but it is not as good as it seems.

Timmy Stoltman
Lost.(Hoping)
Musical Composition (Piano)
I created this piece with many ideas in mind. I decided to create and play this piece in the key of D minor also known as the “saddest key” music is played in. I thought about how I can play dark notes and also like bright notes to highlight the darkness of the book and all of the tragedies. While also showing that the book has happy parts. To reflect the dark notes I played root notes a lot of the time which is basically the main key of a chord down octaves. The main melody of the song is very repetitive and echoey and is mostly played in 4 notes.

Landen Welcenbach
Borders and Picture Stories
Printed Images
My project is a collection of pictures and quotes. Since pictures can tell a thousand words by themselves, the observer can interpret the message. There are also key details you can’t get from the pictures that I included in quotes from the book. My project represents the right way and the wrong way to cross the border. Take time to think of what is happening in the pictures and see what you get from the pictures before reading the quotes.

Kelsey Baumann, Reagan DeMars, and Hannah Jensen
From Page to Present: Exploring the Relevance of History in Modern Literature
Trifold / Multimedia Design / Scrapbook
Our project uses multimedia design to explore and critically analyze the historical connections between the world today and that in the book. We use news articles, photos, hand-drawn art, and quotes extracted from the novel to support our analysis. Join us as we explore the novel in a new light, and display how the historical events explored in Lost Children Archive are still relevant in the world today.

Erin Blader
Reaching Across the Divide: An analysis of Lost Children Archive as it exemplifies the history of human’s self isolation
Photo Collage / Critical analysis
My project uses famous portraits of the past to connect to multiple themes found in the novel, Lost Children Archive. The portraits not only connect to the photos taken of the journey the family takes across the country but goes along with a deeper understanding of the complex and fractured relationships of the family members themselves. The portraits represent a great divide between characters, a wall that can never be scaled, a fortress never to be breached. The visual goes along with an essay critiquing the novel’s explicit connection between the broken bonds of characters and pride and stubbornness they all secretly harbor that lead to alienation from loved ones and society.

Addison DeMars and Lily Thomsen Keller
Perspectives
Scrapbook/Collage
Our scrapbook represents the family through all four perspectives, using different paper and decorations. We will have different pages/collages for each member of the family, personalizing each. Also, we will have pages representing the trip and the general plot/feel of the story. We will also write a short analysis of the pages and include that in the end of our scrapbook.

Annya Drozd and Stephanie Mandeik
Relationships – Past and Present
Pop-up scrapbook / Poster
Our project uses art and different multimedia technologies to explore different aspects of the book. It uses polaroids, quotes from the book, and analysis of the story to create a complex art piece with depth relating to the various relationships in the novel. It dives deep into the mother and father as well as their children and the projects they are working on. All of these different media come together with color and contrast to create a captivating project that is full of life.

Teighan Fancher and Alayna Kuershner
The Lost Children Archive
Mixed Media Poster
Our project will use different art mediums all incorporated into one poster to portray an image of the family in Lost children Archive. Our goal is to make it tell the story through easter eggs in the poster. We want people who read the book to be able to see the poster and be able to figure out what little objects are and what components mean to the story.

Amelia N. Gray
Lost Children Archive
Scenery Replication / Diorama
My project is a three dimensional model that will replicate the seventh elegy scene. I will make a visual of the kids on the train, I will also make a visual of the children’s thoughts on the city and what they are hoping it to be. To go with the project I will write a summary of what my diorama is about. I’m going to use quotes and figurative language that Valeria Luiselli uses throughout the Elegy.

Kendal Gustke and Molli Keller
Immigration through a Lens
Scrapbook
We have created a scrapbook that includes polaroids that tell the journey of an immigrant child into the USA. Each polaroid has a short explanation as to why we chose to include said picture and how it relates to a child immigration and Lost Children Archive. We have driven around our community to collect pictures that have helped us most accurately explain the struggles immigrant children may experience.

Evher Hernandez
Definition of the American Dream
With this project having an extremely controversial topic of migration between the U.S. and Mexico, I used this topic to display the significance of someone deeply important to me – my father. My father came to the U.S. and found a life to which is the representation of a success story. From starting his own business, starting a family, and now being able to help support his family in Mexico, my dad is the definition of the American Dream.

Tanis Johnson
The Life of Valeria Luiselli in Lost Children Archive
This project details how Valeria Luiselli’s stories releate to her book Lost Children Archive. It gives a basic introduction of her life and details her job as an interpreter for immigrants coming over the border, riding La Bestia. Other parts of her life are included in the novel such as her divorce and her experiences with migrant children via “The Elegies for Lost Children”.

Kenneth Mandeik
Elegy
Painting
I will be painting the train described in the elegies that showed a lot of importance to me. The train is only a small part of the journey described in the elegies but there is importance to the train and there’s clever symbolism that I can highlight in my art. I plan on creating a detailed illustration with some creative freedom. Although it should be known that I’m not the best painter.

Kelsey Moore
Sound Structure of My Life
Recordings
My project is the “sound structure of my life”. I decided to do this project because it is based off of the mom and dad’s project. I wanted my project to somewhat relate to what is going on in the book. The recordings are random times in my life that I felt like I should have recorded. Some recordings are important to me and some don’t have much meaning.

Mia Rigden
Exploring The Sound
Soundscape
My project is a soundscape that represents the quote “I wonder at times if the children are indeed getting any of it, or if they’re even supposed to get it. Perhaps we expose them to too much–too much world. And perhaps we expect too much from them, expect them to understand things that they are maybe not ready to” (90 Luiselli). Using sounds I want to bring this quote to life, and answer the question. Do we expose our children to, too much? This follows the theme of family, and loss in the novel Lost Childrens Archive.

Max Scharnhorst
Detained Children Portrait Collection
Portrait Collection and Essay
My project is a collection of three portraits including three children in detention centers. There is also a collection of quotes from migrants in detention centers and those who have survived their journeys to gain refuge in America. Accompanying this is a short essay briefly explaining the issues with how the United States handles immigration.

Gage Steltenpohl
Sea Turtle
Sculpture
The project uses symbolic representation to explore the ways that the injured turtle found in the aquarium to show how the family feels of having to constantly adapt to a new area and a new life. Just like the turtle, the family tries to get used to a new country, but as soon as they get close, they move around.

Alyssa Szymanski and James Howen
Elegies of Lost Children
Scrapbook
In this project we will be showing the story within a story through a scrapbook. The story within the story are the elegies. The scrapbook will include pictures from the elegies, and significant artifacts in the stories for each of the elegies (at least most of them). This is significant because the elegies are mirroring what her project is in the book.

Alyssa Aasum
Children Affected by Parental Issues
Poster
My project focuses on how children can be affected by constant parent disputes. In Lost Children Archive the parents have a few small disputes in their falling apart relationship. In my project I tell what the parents can do that are effective to their children when they have constant ongoing disputes. I also have what children do when this problem occurs. Meaning how they act and how it can affect them in many ways. I even have how children cope with this situation that they are in. I also have new ways for children to cope during that situation. Then I added two pictures that show the effectiveness and unbalancement to the children.

Andrea Acahua Greenwold
The Real Lost Children
Informational Article
Over 6.1 million children are affected by immigration. Whether that be having their parents taken away and children being put in shelters, or the children themselves being deported. The book Lost Children Archive does a great job highlighting these issues as outlined in this article.

Rebeca Adamson Sirvent
Memphis Cassette
Interactive Sculpture
I decided to call my project Memphis Cassette. I want to represent and show another way in which the son could have explained everything to his little sister if he had not recorded that audio. The question I have researched is: How does Memphis influence her brother’s behavior? What things might have been different without her? I looked through information about how siblings are influenced by moving so much to different cities, seeing their parents distance themselves… Once I informed myself, I was inspired by the different scenarios they went through the story and their characteristics. I’ve also used my experiences with my younger brother and being separated for so long for the first time.

Oriah Anderson
Two Lost, One Found
Creative Short Story
Two Lost, One Found is a short story written in the perspective of two “lost children” on their own journey that many of the “lost children” may take but aren’t heard from or about, just like several of the stories in Lost Children Archive. The story is meant to appear autobiographical in nature as though it were written by the two characters, which contributes to the emotional nature of the piece when one of the characters dies in the middle of writing the diary entries.

Aryana Ausderau
Just Like Mom
Children’s Book
Just Like Mom is a book about the relationship between a mother and her daughter. The main idea of this book is how the mother influenced her daughter to be like her when she grows up without realizing it. This project focuses on the influence that parents have on their children. This relates to Lost Children Archive because the parents end up influencing the boy to be a documentarian/documentarist without even realizing it. Just Like Mom and Lost Children Archive correlate because the mother in the book influences her daughter to become a baker when she gets older, similar to how the parents in Lost Children Archive influenced the boy to become a documentarian/documentarist.

Adriano Barrios-Reyes
The Lost Children in Our Society
Essay
Lost Children In Our Society goes in depth with migration within our society and how people perceive it. This essay also includes immigrants’ mental health and their perspective on entering a different country. The Elegies in Lost Children Archive made me think about how it could relate to our world and how I could relate my parents’ migration story to that of the kids. I think that the process of creating this project took time to think, ask questions, and research.

Avery Baumann
Our Families
Tri-fold display
This project is called Our Families. It is a poster board with all of the important pictures of my siblings from when we were kids.This is significant to the question I asked myself, “what are the similarities and differences between sibling relationships in the book, and other siblings?” because It shows how my siblings see each other, and act towards each other. My project is different because I know first hand what it is like to have your sibling(s) leave, just like the siblings leave each other in Lost Children Archive.

Mason Bautch
History of Immigration
Timeline
My project is a timeline about immigration and how it has changed throughout the years. There have been so many rules and regulations that have changed what immigration is. I have put down the dates of some of the different immigration acts that I thought were the most important. Finally, I connected these acts and policies to Lost Children Archive by showing how these changes affected the characters and events in the book.

Titus Buhl
Riding the Train
Lego Diorama
My project is a Lego Diorama of the Boy and the Girl riding on top of a train towards Echo Canyon. I chose this as my project for the significance of this plot point in the book. This portion of the book is when we get to see the Boy and the Girl as ‘lost children’. They experience many similarities to other lost children by riding this train and traveling through the desert. I liked the merging of the past and the present, and the way they incorporated stories they read into their adventures.

Aubrey Caspersen
A New Beginning
Painting
My project, A New Beginning, is about how the mother left with the girl to go back to NYC to focus more on her work, but when they were leaving the girl looked back one more time at the boy because she didn’t know when she would see him again. The topic of an unconventional marriage is shown in my project by how the mother left with the girl because she wanted to focus more on her work. I relate to my question that I chose “How does the mothers work affect her relationship with her husband? How does that affect boys and girls developing relationships?” because I know what it’s like when two parents split up and how that can affect my developing relationship with my siblings.

Elizabeth Crumley
Echoes of the Lost
Painting
This painting is about the struggle and dynamic of the family. The echoes surrounding them represent the lost moments and memories of the family as they have been torn apart through their journey. The parents face each other to represent a standoffish atmosphere. And the kids stand behind them to represent the emotional distance they have felt from their parents as well as to show that they witness a lot of standoffish behavior between their parents. The darkness of the painting is meant to portray the shadow of doubt they feel throughout the story. The doubt of if they’ll ever be okay again.

Jhovanni Cruz-Lopez
The Border Between People
Digital Collage
My project is about why people cross the border, there’s a lot of reasons for why people cross the border but I explain the fundamentals. The mom talking about the deportations made me think about why people cross the border. My project is about why people cross the border and  my project explains this through the pictures and the reasons why people cross the border.  I wrote an explanation at the button of each picture. I would describe my project as easy to understand and as simple. This project is mainly about why people cross the border.

Harlow Foss
Map of the Journeys between The Boy, The Girl, and The Lost Children
Poster/Map
Map of the Journeys between The Boy, The Girl, and The Lost Children is a map based off of what the boy drew in Lost Children Archive. One main concept from Lost Children Archive that inspired my project was how the boy and the girl’s journey connected with the Lost children’s journey, in both how they were similar and different. The journeys the children took are similar because they are both trying to find a way home to the people they care about. My project focuses on the path the boy and the girl took and on the path the Lost Children took. With all the little details that contributed to their journeys. This project is a poster with hand drawn and colored images that have meaning to the story.

Dusty Gardner
A Look Inside – Immigration
Interactive Sculpture
My project is titled “A Look Inside – Immigration”, and this project enables people to interpret what immigrants bring with them on their journeys. The inspiration for this project is from the photo on page 250 of the Lost Children Archive which shows various objects found on a migrant trail. The objects inspired me to fill a backpack with objects that immigrants would bring with them. This project helps people deepen their understanding of what immigrants bring with them and understand why immigrants bring certain objects when they can carry so little with them.

Kennedy Gran
The Letter of Her Story
Letter
The Letter of Her Story is about a girl who is separated from her father after crossing the border to America. She is now by herself in a foster-care center not knowing where her father is. To help her with being alone she finds the book Lost Children Archive. Reading this book helps her with feeling less alone. She writes to her father in a letter, but doesn’t know if it’ll ever reach him. The only thing she can rely on is hope that the letter will somehow find him. The topic from Lost Children Archive that inspired me to create The Letter of Her Story was the stories of the children from the elegies. My project focuses on how the girl can relate and understand what the children in the elegies go through in Lost Children Archive.

Ashton Halvorson
Why Sibling Relationships Are Important
Informational Poster
My project, Why Sibling Relationships Are Important, is a poster about how siblings growing up together can help make each sibling grow as a better person. I got the idea from this from the concept in the book, Lost Children Archive, about having to deal with the loss of a sibling. This is because the main character realizes his step sister of five years is going away when their parents break up, thus meaning he lost a sibling. My project is a poster with a paragraph of information about how having a sibling affects the mind of a young child. The project mostly focuses on how having a sibling can help a child, by showing what goes through the mind of a kid, and how it affects them in adulthood.

Ashton Hanson
Webbing it Together
Interactive StoryBoard
In Webbing It Together, I focused on researching the question “How do Memphis and the Boy react to immigration and how do their reactions and experiences influence the reader’s perspective on immigration?” To answer this question I looked at and analyzed five different sources including Lost Children Archive and wrote about how each source contributes to answering the question and analyzes the text.

Andreanna Hemenway
The Ambiance and Emotion of Lost Children Archive
Painting
The Ambiance and Emotion of Lost Children Archive is about the overall environment and sentiment of the immigration topics that take place in the book that are also happening all around us. My project was inspired by the trip that the Boy and Girl go on in the desert to find Manuela’s girls and other lost children, but also the airplane scene when kids are being deported and separated from their parents. It also touches on the feeling of intensity and uneasiness that the children and parents have to deal with when being separated and deported without each other not knowing what is going to happen next, and how immigration affects the mental health and wellbeing of families as a whole.

Addison Herman
Journal Entries of Siblings with a Unique Bond
Journal
Journal Entries of Siblings With a Unique Bond represents the differences between different bonds between siblings. There are so many different scenarios of how siblings live their lives. I started off by thinking about the bond between the boy and the girl from Lost Children Archive, and compared it to my bond with my siblings. Then I realized there are so many different situations that happen between siblings, I could use other types of siblings in my project. There are certain traits the boy and girl have in common with some siblings in certain scenarios, but there are also key differences in every bond, which make it unique. I researched different sibling bonds, and wrote journal entries for each situation I thought of.

Avvia Herman
Sibling Relationships
Poster
I started with the question “How does the sibling relationship in LCA compare to the sibling relationships in the real world?” What inspired me to pick this topic was the strong connection between the two siblings, all throughout the book we see that the siblings are always caring for eachother no matter the situation. My project focuses on how the sibling in the book compares  with the real world sibling bonds, and that siblings bonds and relationships cannot be broken and always help each other.

Andrew Herold
How Lost Children Archive has Impacted and Changed our World to Make it Better
Essay
Lost Children Archive shows many different examples, stories, and ways to help our community with immigrants. Giving them ways to survive and thrive in different situation. Such as a child and father come over the border but wasted all their money doing so therefore they can seek help by going to homeless shelters homes for the homeless or at least the soup kitchen so they have food to survive. We have more of those places to help people because of Lost Children Archive. And the book has inspired hundreds of people to help out in any way they can even if they donate 1 dollar.

Sawyer Herrick
My Archive Box
Interactive Sculpture
The project I decided to create for this year’s Great World’s Text program was to create my own Archive Box from the book. I decided and was inspired to do this as I was fascinated by the deeper meaning that the box’s contents had within them as I read further into the book. Instead of directly recreating one of the boxes, I decided to take the contents and personalize them to make it my own.

Frank Juresh
The Apache Tribe in Lost Children Archive
Informational Poster
My project focuses on the Apache tribe that is included in Lost Children Archive. My project is a poster that includes how the Apache tribe influenced the characters in Lost Children Archive. I include quotes and different examples from Lost Children Archive that revolve around the Apache tribe, reasons of why and how the characters are influenced by the tribe, and any other effects the Apache tribe had on the characters in the book. I also include reasons why the author decided to include the Apache tribe in the book. I chose to focus on the Apache tribe because I think that it is interesting.

Morgan Jurowski
In the Nest
Creative Sculpture
In the Nest is a tree that holds five nests.The first nest portrays children having similar personality traits to their parents, for example being adventurous. Nest number two portrays how children look up to role models, and therefore want to copy their every move. Nest number three portrays a nest when parents prioritize working, over family life. Overall this can drive kids to act out, this is shown by the bird flying away. Nest number five represents parents being separated or divorced, and the effects on children being incredibly negative. Lastly, the final nest represents the family from Lost Children Archive. Overall, all of the nests relate to parenting choices made in the book, and how they affected the children.

Kelsie Klomsten
Siblings Relationships
Poster
My project relates to Lost Children Archive because it is showing the different bonds and relationships between two siblings. My project focuses on the important relationships the siblings have. In creating this project I thought about how my own relationships with my siblings compared to the relationship between the boy and the girl throughout different events throughout the book.

Zayn Knutson
The Impact of Immigration
Interactive Poster
The Impact of Immigration is a project about how immigration affects the US and the immigrant families that come here. One thing that inspired me to do research in the book was when they were trying to find Manuela’s daughters and how many other kids had nice clothes with phone numbers in the back and they realized how much harder this is going to be. Another thing was how Manuela was feeling trying to have people find them and how she felt at the end of the book. Also the project is in “polaroid pictures” as a reference to the end of the book. Now this project mainly focuses on the Impact of immigration on the US as well as on the immigrant families.

Dalton Konkel
LCA Relationship Bridges
Poster
My project is called LCA Relationship Bridges and is about the 2 main relationships in the book Lost Children Archive. In my project, I have some quotes from the parents’ relationship and I have some quotes from the kids’ relationship. These quotes talk about many different things within each relationship. The ones about the kids’ relationship talk about how they stay together and solve each other’s problems. The quotes about the parents show that they grow apart and eventually separate. I also added 2 pictures of bridges. 1 bridge for the parents and 1 bridge for the kids. The kids bridge is strong, sturdy, and holding together. The parents’ bridge is cracking, and falling apart. This shows that the kids’ relationship is way stronger than the parents’ relationship.

Morgan Koxlien
The Mother’s Side
Poster
My project is about Lost Children Archive in that I chose to explore the mother’s side of the story and the road trip. So I talked about how the family didn’t want to go on the road trip but they had to for the mother and fathers work. Then for the mother’s side I talked about how she helps the kids more when they need help but the mother also was busy but not as busy as the father was. The kids didn’t want to go on the road trip because they want to do other stuff, so when they got back they ran away in the desert but they didn’t know where they were.

Kyla Lambeck
Replica of the Lost Children Clothing
Creative Sculpture
My project is titled Replica of the Lost Children Clothing to depict the issues and resources the lost children didn’t have throughout their journey to the US border. The thing that inspired me most from Lost Children Archive to create the project are the elegies presented throughout the book describing the difficult journey to the US border of the children. The Replica of the Lost Children Clothing is supposed to focus on the idea that children traveling from across the border in today’s world don’t have the benefits of keeping up their health and don’t have access to necessary resources to stay healthy throughout their journey.

Corbin Larson
The Benefits of Storytelling and Reenactment as Shown in Lost Children Archive
Essay
The Benefits of Storytelling and Reenactment as Shown in Lost Children Archive is based on a simple question: How do Reenactment and storytelling help someone understand immigration more? I ask this question because while reading Lost Children Archive we see a lot of reenacting and storytelling through both the parents and kids. Seeing all of this reenacting and storytelling throughout the book sparked my interest in why and how beneficial reenacting and storytelling are.

Katelyn Maug
When the Relationship Slowly Ends
Large Storybook
My project name is When the Relationship Slowly Ends. I chose this title because the mother’s relationship slowly ends over time and I wanted to do research on why relationships that seem strong slowly fall apart at times. I wanted to create a short book on the research I did so I made the book on how the parents’ relationship slowly started to fade. I chose this project because I wanted to learn how and why the parents’ relationship slowly ended over time.

Andrea Mercado
Sibships
Tri-fold display
My project, Sibships, also short for “sibling relationships,” was inspired by the profound wonder of wanting to understand the sibling dynamic between the brother and sister in Lost Children Archive. My project is made up of psychological research that allows myself, and potentially other readers, to understand a deeper analysis of the bond between the brother and sister and other sibling relationships in general.

Ashley Miguel-Pablo
The Struggles and Impact in Immigration
Painting
In The Struggles and Impact in Immigration, it inspires the way of thinking of others. In my project you can see people running away in different directions. They were a group but as soon as they saw the border patrols they started running off different ways and eventually got separated, while not knowing the way to their destination. This project focuses on immigrants migrating and getting separated. Every item in the painting represents something. For example, the rocks, dry trees, sand, and cactus all have a meaning relating to the impact immigration has had. Ask me about them to learn more!

Hannah Pirk
Dunes on the Border
Painting
This piece was inspired by the immigration crisis at the border, and has references to Lost Childrens Archive by Valeria Luiselli. I used oil paint and linseed oil to capture the changing sands of the Arizona desert. The cowboy hat and feather is a nod to the removal of the Native Americans who lived in the Southwest of the US, and the fence at the border represents current immigration issues in America. I used warm colors to capture the heat of the desert, but also to represent the strong emotions surrounding immigration of illegal immigrants for US citizens.

Cristal Sandoval-Lopez
Lost Innocence
Tri-fold personal display
Lost Children Archive focuses on the real world issue of immigration. It shows the struggles faced by the immigrants and the risk they take for a better life The lost Children represents the immigrants in the real world. The lost children went through so many traumatic events never experiencing a childhood. They struggled being separated from their families and the constant threat of danger. This project also highlights those struggles and how they have been present in the experiences of people in my life.

Brynna Schneider
Siblings are Special Friends
Scrapbook
This is me and my older brother, Bradyn. We are five-years apart. We have a special bond, which relates to the siblings in the Lost Children Archive novel in some ways. Between stealing his food and following him around, I always kept him on his toes. My brother and I grew up together, along with the boy and the girl in the Lost Children Archive novel. This got us to grow closer together, and get to know more about one another. While getting the advantage to grow up together, we also made many memories together. As the brother cared for the younger sister in the novel, my brother cared for me. He would always teach me new things, and helped me become who I am today. If it wasn’t for the parents splitting in the Lost Children Archive novel, the brother would’ve done the same thing for his sister as well.

Brett Schorbahn
The Past and Present of Immigration to the United States
Poster
My project is about the past and present of immigration to the United States. I was inspired by how the mother in Lost Children Archive was trying to help Manuela get her daughters across the border and the stories of the kids crossing in the elegies.

Jonah Semb
Bonds Withstanding
Creative Sculpture
Bonds Withstanding is a model about how many immigrant families are separated by death during immigration or deportation and how their family bond preserves after separation. Lost Children Archive inspired me through the story of Manuela’s children and how many immigrant children pass away while trying to reconnect with their family. I would describe my project as a way to try to represent what many families experience. Almost everyone on this planet has experienced loss, but these families do not get to have any closure when it comes to their lost family members. So I wanted to show how even when that loved one dies, the family bond preserves even in death.

Nora Semb
Tucson Brochure from the 1940s
Brochure
When reading Lost Children Archive I kept wondering what Arizona was like when there was mass migration, so I looked into southern Arizona in the 1940s to get an idea. I found that in the 1940s the biggest places to visit were Miracle Mile and Old Tucson now being big tourist attractions in Arizona. In the beginning of the 40s the State Department received word from the U.S. embassy in Mexico of a bomb plot at Hoover Dam. The plot was allegedly made by German Agents and the threat caused electricity in California to go out for a period of time. A lot of newcomers came to Arizona from Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas because of the cotton boom which followed the building of the Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River. World War II changed the economy as more and more military bases were being installed and people coming in from the mass migration. The population doubled in size every twenty years since the 1940s. Lot of people were also buying war bonds and were encouraged to do so. I displayed all this in my brochure by placing little pictures and also the text bubbles to display the different aspects of not only southern Arizona but also Arizona as a whole. I made the cover after a picture of an old Tucson poster I found online. And largely based the inside of the brochure on the poster itself, by adding cactus and white flowers everywhere inside. I have included my research, topic question, and sources for the information I gathered.

Deacon Steig
The Relationships Within LCA
Poster
In the book, Lost Children Archive, I think there are many different ways to view the relationships in the family. Valeria Luiselli does a good job of showing everyone’s perspectives on the family and how everyone feels about each other. My project goes through the different relationships inside the family and shows how they are similar and different. My project also looks into how everyone feels toward each other and how it changes as the book goes on.

Connor Stevens
Immigrant Children’s Barriers
Creative Sculpture
My project is called Immigrant Children’s Barriers. It asks “What are some social and physical problems immigrants face in our country, and how are we going to fix them?”. The fence represents the border and the written elements elaborate on what the social and physical barriers in our world are. This forces us to consider what the U.S. citizens and government can do to help young immigrant children face these barriers.

Brandon Valasquez
Immigration Policies Between the Past and LCA
Informative tri-fold display
Immigration Policies Between the Past and LCA is a tri-fold that contrasts the differences and similarities of the immigration policies of the U.S. before the period of Lost Children Archive and during that period. I was inspired by the documentation of the mother which led me to create this informational tri-fold. In my tri-fold, concepts explored are trends and policies about immigration around time periods that relate to the book. I researched about immigration before the book was published and when it was published. I then cited data I had discovered or thought useful and provided explanations and my own thoughts to the excerpts, in my project. I can relate to the concepts and topics Lost Children Archive explores as I come from immigrant parents.

Kiara Wilk
Archive Boxes
Interactive Sculpture
My project is called Archive Boxes. There are 7 boxes and each box has an archive in it from each family member. 4 for my stepdad, 1 for my mom, 1 for me, and 1 for my sister. All of these items are significant to each of us and they all have their own meaning. This relates to the book and characters because they all have special things in the boxes that are meaningful to them.

Emily Bakey
The Road Trip to Echo Canyon (Lost Children Archive)
Colored Pencil Project
The project is helpful when interpreting the family’s road trip in the Lost Children Archive because it creates a geographic representation and analysis of the entirety of the road trip, including its major plot points. The project critically interprets the book because it shows the road trip following the main characters in great detail while still creating a simplistic visual of the road trip as a whole. It also includes specific details that help progress the family’s plot in the novel. Using specific details from the Lost Children Archive such as Echo Canyon, Elvis Presley Boulevard Inn, and the Deportation Site, the project was able to show the very spirit of the book as a whole.  First, research was used to find the order of events that happened within the book to get an accurate representation of the road trip. Then, the book was used to draw a rough draft and label the most important parts of the road trip to use for the project. The photos from the book were used as references to draw the outline. National parks and other important sites that were not in the pictures were used to get a good reference. Finally,  colored pencils and shading were used to fill everything in.

Amelia Burgoni
New York City at Night
Acrylic Painting
I wanted my project to be focused on the origin point in the story, New York City, but also bring in elements from the migrants’ point of view. I have painted the night of New York City, without colors, to signify the restraint that many migrant children are under throughout the corrupt immigration system. My painting also shows the moon’s presence, hence the night, to show potentiality. I wanted to include an aspect of hope to show that migrant children especially have the chance to re-start or complete their lives as they wish.

Keira Daniels
Lost in Transit
Watercolor Painting
The watercolor painting I created particularly portrays the choice that races through the narrator’s mind throughout the novel: to continue to Arizona or to leave with the girl and return to New York. In the painting, the car is driving between Arizona and New York. In both the New York and Arizona sides of the painting, there is a sign warning about immigrants surrounding the area, which demonstrates how both states have an immense number of immigrants. The car driving between the two states has both chaos and love coming from it. There is much chaos and opposition between the husband and wife, but much love and care between the son and daughter. I created this watercolor painting by drawing the core elements in pencil, painting the drawings, and outlining the objects in pen. I conducted this piece because it is a fun way to emphasize several core aspects of the book, such as the decision between working in Arizona or New York, the desolate relationship between the husband and wife, and immigration.

Nandi Dube, Lilie Fouts, Emily Mignon, Annalise Minorik
English Scholars
Multimedia Album
Our project boasts a prominent album cover inviting the viewer inside. The eclectic combination of images like toys, drawings, and water juxtaposes the imposing images of maps and wanted signs as a child pulls at her concerned mother’s arm. There is so much brightness yet the characters are stuck in the dark. Within the album is a list of songs and a corresponding explanation. Songs hold a key to our limbic system and can elicit great emotion. We felt the songs could aptly capture the variety of emotions and tensions present in the characters as they journeyed on their road trip. Finally, the back cover leaves the viewer with hazy images that force contemplation of our established societal structures. Should immigration laws change? Is the world as simple as our privileged perspective makes it out to be? The back imposes doubt while leaving space for a ray of hope.

Aila Gingerich and Ella Heyndrickx
Relocations through the eyes of children
Collage/poster project of photos symbolizing what immigration looks like through young eyes
We decided to make this collage of photos which we believe symbolize what immigration or relocation may look like to a child because of the main character’s teachings to the boy and the girl throughout the book The Lost Children Archives. We enjoyed the indirectness of the characters by using pronouns rather than names—because once you know someone’s name, you can call them out. The book becomes much more relatable for readers with names for the children such as “the girl” and “the boy”. This project is representing a relocation, not specifically an immigration across borders of the boy and the girl in the book The Lost Children Archives watching their parents and the events which follow their road trip with innocent minds. The relocation is seen through the eyes of children because the boy and girl are shortly separated from their parents, in which they meet migrants and gain a new, insightful perspective as well as the feeling of being completely unaccompanied. We chose to use Valeria Luiselli’s lost child approach of relating to the deep fear in any parent’s heart, “What if this was my child?” We also wanted to highlight the dissolution of a marriage in the face of different goals, just how a border separates families.

Addison Hervey and Gia Heid
Traversing the Traveling Train
Game Board
This project displays the section of the book where the children are lost from their parents. The project is a game based on the children’s travels on their way to find their parents. The start of the game is in the desert, and the end is the children reuniting with the parents. The project reflects the text, Lost Children Archive because of the railroad tracks, states, fast track cards, and the backtrack cards. The students chose to do a gameboard to make our project interactive and give others a chance to experience what the children felt like.

Violet Hyde and Camille Marquardt
Journey from New York to Arizona: Immigration in U.S.
Map and State Brochures of places in the book
This project is a visual representation of all the places where the family in the book The Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli went while on their way south to Arizona. The Brochures of each state say places to see while visiting, some facts about the state, and some information regarding immigrants in the state. This project connects to the Lost Children Archive because it relates back to the family’s road trip across the U.S. and the places they have visited together as a family, even though their family was drifting apart. Each brochure is of a different state that the family stopped at which were New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas,  New Mexico, and Arizona. By including the information on immigration for each state, the brochures reflect on the immigration aspect of Manuela and her family and about immigration in each state today. The information on immigration is primarily on Mexican immigrants, considering that was where Manuela originally came from and because the narrator and her husband were both part Mexican.

Kate Jannette
Cruise Control
Playlist
This playlist includes songs that reflect the undertones of The Lost Children Archive, not only in their rustic and soulful sound, but in their heartful lyricism. Many of the songs reflect themes of the novel, such as marriage struggles, the growth that comes from new experiences, the importance of developing one’s own identity, how that identity can be lost during marriage, and the value of shared memory and storytelling. Music can speak and convey emotions in a way that plain words often cannot, which is why it is so powerful. These songs pair accurately with the plot and distinct vibe of The Lost Children Archive. Scan the code to view and listen to the curated collection of songs.

Brynn Krull and Joy Krull
Pivotal Points in Polaroids
Picture Poster
This project is a visual representation of the many destinations the family of four photographed on their road trip from New York to Arizona as well as themes throughout the story. The young boy owns a polaroid camera and he uses it to capture moments throughout the trip so that his sister who is too young to understand things now will be able to look at all the pictures in the future to see memories. At the close of the book, all twenty-four photographs taken by the boy were displayed. Places like the Geronimo Cemetery, the gas stations, and different shots of his family members are all depicted. It gives a summary of the story through the young boy’s eyes, which gives an important perspective because so much of the book is narrated by the mother. The Pivotal Points in Polariod poster shows pictures with images we thought depicted different themes, destinations, and recurring events hoping to explain the story in a more thorough way. The pictures chosen have a wide variety as they show simpler things such as the soundscape the family worked on in New York, but also deeper ideas like the trains many immigrated into the U.S. on. We chose to highlight the perspective of the little boy because his perspective is not valued a ton which also fits the ongoing problem throughout the story of immigration. Many viewpoints are not valued and people do not understand what illegal immigration would look like.

Michaela Lavalle and Valeria Nevarez-Padilla
Childhood Changed
Digital illustration
In Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, the stories of children illegally immigrating to the United States are told through the Elegies for Lost Children. These elegies provide readers with insight to what life would be like as a child journeying to cross the U.S. border and striving for a better life. The Elegies for Lost Children specifically show how even though these immigrant children are forced to give up most of their childhood, they are still children at the end of the day. The drawing recreates the scene in the Elegies for Lost Children where the immigrant children are using the broken phone to take a selfie after using it to pretend to call people. During this scene, the children are on the roof of a moving train, in the middle of the desert, with little food or water, and with only each other for company. However, they still manage to hold on to their “childishness” even though their circumstances have required them to grow up and become more mature. They show this through a special moment of the children coming together and taking a pretend selfie on a broken phone. Our idea for the drawing resulted from us wanting to highlight the story of the lost children. We chose to highlight their story because it’s a current story that is lived daily by children crossing the United States border in hopes of having a better life.

Victoria Lopez
Erasure
Blackout Poem
This project is a blackout poem created from an excerpt of the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929 (Blease’s Law). A black marker was used to “blackout” portions of the text, leaving behind a poem. This is symbolic of the erasure of immigrants through the migration, assimilation, and deportation processes. The poem’s central theme of dehumanization highlights the mistreatment and erasure of immigrants. I decided to create a blackout poem because it would portray historical immigration-related documents in an alternative light. The document used is an excerpt from the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929, a law that criminalized crossing the border outside an official port of entry. Its purpose was to restrict Mexican immigration, making “unlawfully entering the country” a misdemeanor and returning to the United States after being previously deported a felony. The racist motivations are evident and the act is a significant part of US immigration law history. The history of immigration and its effects are prevalent throughout Valeria Luiselli’s The Lost Children Archive. Using an immigration law solidifies the concept that immigrants are treated as lesser and immigrant children are left to suffer the consequences.

Makenzie Ness and Emerson Huebner
Capturing Memories
3D Example of Polaroid Camera
Our project is a cardboard recreation of the Polaroid camera the boy used to capture the memories of his family’s road trip. The boy’s pictures are one of the main ways he is preserving this period of their lives for his sister since he knows she will be too young to remember. The pictures the boy takes help readers to imagine and understand what it was like to be in his position. The Polaroid camera is of importance to the boy because he values the images he takes. The camera is significant to Lost Children Archive because it shows what events the boy feels are the most meaningful and wants to take pictures of for his sister to look back and see.

Sophia Nevarez-Padilla
A family trip
A paper collage
With this paper collage, I wanted to represent how the children in the book are still kids. This collage specifically represents the son and daughter. The reason for the paper being torn instead of cut in the sunset represents how the family begins to break further apart as the trip goes on. Even though the paper is torn, the sunset is still recognizable; this is just like how even though the bond between the parents begins to break, the children still try to grasp at what it means to be a family. This project also represents the lost children, since they have “lost the right to their childhood” (Luiselli) because a project like this would usually be made in elementary school. Though the children are exposed to heavy topics such as immigration, identity and what it means to be a family, there remains a childlike innocence that is depicted in the collage. To the parents of the children, this trip seems like an important journey towards their goals, whereas to the children, this is a long road trip in the heat of Arizona.

Mariel Pante and Samu Dube
Meet You In Echo Canyon
Watercolor painting
We did a watercolor painting of the boy’s map for the parents and included lyrics from “Space Oddity,” excerpts from the mother’s book of Elegies for Lost Children, and quotes regarding the Apaches. We were also inspired by the mountains on the book cover. Since the boy and the girl interacted with only their parents, their imaginations were shaped by what their parents chose to show and reveal to them. We wanted to illustrate how the media they were exposed to led to their running away on an adventure—into the unknown like going into space—as Swiftfeather and Memphis, to be “lost children.” The mother and the father’s fixations on the lost children and the Apaches respectively bled into their children’s minds, and the culmination of ideas led them to attempt their journey to Echo Canyon. The concept of how parents shape the minds of their children was prominent in Lost Children Archive.

Marlo Patterson
The Lost Childrens Archive Collage
Themes Collage
For my project I really wanted to find a deeper meaning of the themes I found common throughout the book. The themes I chose to include are, childhood innocence, the search for identity, languages, family, the power of storytelling, the beauty of nature, and the apaches tribes memory. I found images that I found appropriate and fitting to the themes I chose to demonstrate.

Keira Peterson and Hailey Holub
The Lost Children Gallery
Polaroid display that emphasizes the importance of documentation
This project was conducted to showcase how the Polaroid pictures were a significant part of the story when it comes to documenting the family’s trip. The Polaroids illustrate different scenes and symbols from the book and the ones incorporated in this project best represent the main themes from Lost Children Archive. On the poster, the Polaroids are laid out to be chronologically in order of the events in the book to show how they were taken in relation to the documentation. This project reflects a critical interpretation of the text because it showcases the elements of the book that were either recurring, important, or abstract. Some of these elements are the road trip, lost children, the Apache tribe, gradual separation within the family, and the theme of questions throughout the book.

Catie Power
Music Lost Along the Road
Book Soundtrack Scrapbook
A road trip is not a road trip without a good playlist. The road trip in Lost Children Archive was full of twists and turns both physically on the road and within the family. Songs and specific lyrics were assembled together within a scrapbook to connect to the important events and emotions of the family. A group of four songs was collected for each respective box; all groups followed the themes of the contents of the box and the text that preceded it. Following the different ideas and themes that went along with each box, such as their family life in Box I and the memories created through the boy’s photos to go along with Box VII allowed the listener to imagine the song in a specific part of the book. The soundtrack follows the deteriorating relationship between the parents and switches to more childlike songs that suit the boy’s point of view. Music can bring an extra interpersonal connection between a reader and a story, and that was displayed within this project.

Sarah Rettler
Exposing Euphemisms: The Border Crisis
Picture Collage
My project looks at euphemisms related to border control and how their use diminishes the gravity of the crisis occurring at the United States-Mexico border. The images in my collage illustrate that commonly used euphemisms related to the border crisis fail to capture the severity of the issue by comparing them side-by-side with images of the actual situation. This project is inspired by a quote from “Box V” of Lost Children Archive that exposes the truth about euphemisms. Specifically, my project interprets that quote to show how euphemisms fail to accurately describe the severity of the US-Mexico border crisis.

Gabby Stammer and Ella Bauman
Our Journey in a Box
Detailed box with personal items inside
We decided to take inspiration for each of the boxes that the family members had. In the book, the boxes showed who each character was and what was going on in their life. It was as if their box was a snapshot of their lives including the struggles they went through. We took this to heart and chose to create our own box as a snapshot into our lives. In our box includes polaroids, notes, and other important objects that represent our lives. We want to tell our story by attacking the imagery of a box in the story and bring it to life for everyone to see. We chose to do this project because we saw the importance of each box throughout the story. While the family and different relationships continued to evolve throughout the story the boxes and the story they told about each character truly stuck out to us. We chose to create our own box about our own journeys throughout our lives to show how important we felt the sign of the boxes were. We decided to add important sentimental objects from multiple stages of our lives including the struggles, the memories, and the happy times. We believe that the boxes are a huge interpretation of the storyline as each box is different showing how each person is always changing and has their own journey just like Lost Children Archive.