All Is Nat Lost

by Maria Scrivan

In Maria Scrivan’s All Is Nat Lost, Natalie’s school trip to Philadelphia becomes an unexpected test of independence when she and her friends get separated from their group. This humorous, full-color graphic novel—not a traditional picture book—explores friendship, uncertainty, and finding the confidence to help solve a problem.

Big Idea

Courage does not require having every answer: it can mean acknowledging uncertainty, listening to others, and taking a thoughtful next step. Scrivan’s comics also demonstrate how words, pictures, and carefully timed pauses work together to tell a story.

Discussion Questions

1.How do Natalie’s expectations for the trip compare with what actually happens? What do those differences help her discover?
2.When Natalie and her friends face uncertainty, how do their different reactions affect one another?
3.Which moment shows Natalie becoming more confident? What evidence can you find in both the words and the pictures?
4.How does Scrivan make an uncomfortable situation funny without making the characters’ feelings seem unimportant?
5.What is the difference between being independent and trying to handle everything alone? How does the story help you think about that difference?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 50 minutes: shared reading 10 minutes, pacing discussion 8 minutes, planning 7 minutes, comic creation 18 minutes, sharing and revision 7 minutes.📦 A copy of All Is Nat Lost, teacher-selected pages for shared viewing, paper or six-panel comic templates, pencils, erasers, crayons or colored pencils, and sticky notes.

Learning Goals

Describe how Natalie responds to a challenge, using evidence from words and illustrations.
Explain how panel sequence, dialogue, and visual pauses influence a comic’s pacing.
Create a clear sequence with a situation, a complication, a thoughtful response, and an outcome.
Represent a character’s feelings through facial expressions, body language, and language.
Distinguish responsible independence from unsafe actions when separated from a group.

Activity Steps

1.Read or revisit a selected sequence from Natalie’s trip. Identify what she wants, what changes, and what readers learn from the pictures that the words alone do not explain.
2.Compare a crowded or dialogue-heavy panel with a quieter panel in the selected pages. Discuss how each affects reading speed; emphasize that more panels or fewer words do not always mean a faster pace.
3.Brainstorm a fictional, low-stakes travel mix-up. Model a safe response: stop, stay in an appropriate safe location, and seek help from a designated trusted adult rather than wandering.
4.Plan six panels: introduce the outing, reveal the problem, show a reaction, pause to think, seek appropriate help, and show the outcome. Students may draw, write, or dictate.
5.Draft the comic, deliberately stretching one reaction across two visual beats or using a larger panel, and compressing another action with a short caption or concise dialogue.
6.Exchange comics with a partner. Partners point out a fast moment, a slow moment, and evidence of the character’s feelings; creators revise one panel and explain their choice.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RL.K.3–RL.2.3 — Identify or describe characters, settings, major events, and responses to challenges, with developmentally appropriate support.
ELA: CCSS RL.3.3 and RL.5.3 — Describe characters and explain how their actions or interactions shape events.
ELA: CCSS RL.1.7, RL.2.7, and RL.3.7 — Use illustrations and words together to understand characters, setting, mood, and story events.
ELA: CCSS W.K.3–W.5.3 — Develop narrative sequences using drawing, dictation, or writing, with increasing attention to details, dialogue, and pacing.
SEL and visual arts: Practice self-awareness, responsible decision-making, and visual communication through expressive comic panels.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

All Is Nat Lost offers a useful pacing study because Natalie’s outward journey through Philadelphia is also an inward journey through uncertainty. Students can track two kinds of movement: what happens during the trip and how Natalie feels about what happens. A brief event can occupy several panels when Scrivan gives readers time to notice a reaction, while a longer transition can pass quickly through a compact sequence. The central craft question is not simply “What happens next?” but “How much attention does this moment deserve?” Because this is a graphic novel, its writing includes visual decisions as well as sentences. Speech balloons guide conversation, expressions communicate feelings, and the spaces between panels ask readers to infer movement and elapsed time. Read selected sequences twice: first for meaning, then for craft. Invite students to notice where they hurry, hesitate, smile, or reread, and to identify the choices that prompted those responses. For K–2, make this a shared visual-reading experience with brief excerpts and oral rehearsal. For grades 3–5, invite students to justify interpretations with specific panel evidence and test Scrivan-inspired techniques in their own comics. Treat devices such as flashbacks, poetic language, or patterns of three as investigation questions, not features students must find on every page.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Trace the rhythm of Natalie’s trip through action, conversation, and reactions. Ask which moments feel stretched or compressed and what the panel sequence contributes to that feeling.
2. Plot	Map the movement from the anticipated school outing to the separation problem and the characters’ responses. Distinguish events that change Natalie’s situation from moments that mainly reveal her feelings.
3. Prosody	Read a conversation aloud using the characters’ expressions and balloon punctuation as clues. Try different speeds and tones, then discuss which interpretation best fits Natalie’s situation.
4. Word	Choose one word from Natalie’s dialogue that strongly communicates worry, excitement, or uncertainty. Substitute a different word and discuss how the character’s voice or the moment’s urgency changes.
5. Concept	Explore how the concrete problem of being lost connects with the broader experience of not knowing what to do. Ask students to support that connection with Natalie’s actions rather than relying only on the title.
6. Voice & Worldview	Notice how Natalie’s responses shape the emotional experience of the trip. Discuss what her language and reactions suggest about how she views herself and unfamiliar situations.
7. Point of View	Separate what readers see happening from what they understand about Natalie’s personal experience. Retell one selected moment from a friend’s perspective and identify what would change.
8. Setting & Place	Study how Scrivan establishes Philadelphia as the setting for an unfamiliar outing. Ask how the city environment contributes to the characters’ excitement, uncertainty, and practical decisions.
9. Original Characters	Compare Natalie with a friend in the same scene, looking at speech, posture, and response to the problem. Students then give their own comic characters distinct reactions rather than making everyone behave alike.
10. Dialogue	Examine how exchanges among Natalie and her friends reveal both information and relationships. Remove a balloon temporarily and ask what meaning or timing disappears.
11. Details	Look for small visual details that help explain the group’s circumstances or a character’s mood. Discuss which details readers need immediately and which reward a second look.
12. Descriptions	Have students describe one Philadelphia panel in words, then compare their paragraph with Scrivan’s image. Discuss how drawing can establish surroundings without interrupting dialogue with lengthy description.
13. Firsts	Identify a moment that feels new or unfamiliar to Natalie during the outing. Ask how a writer can slow down a new experience so readers understand why it matters.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Choose a panel that makes Natalie’s problem feel present and urgent. Identify whether expression, close framing, dialogue, or surrounding panels create that effect.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Compare a fully dramatized conversation with a passage that moves the trip forward more briefly. Discuss why Natalie’s important decisions deserve scene space while some transitions can be compressed.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Track what readers know when the friends become separated and what remains uncertain. Explain how unanswered practical questions create tension even without a villain.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Inspect selected sequences for shifts in time or endings that leave an immediate question unresolved. If a flashback or flash-forward is absent, explain how the trip’s forward-moving action works without it.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Pause before turning a page during an uncertain moment in Natalie’s outing. Predict what the next page might reveal, then examine whether the actual transition delays, answers, or changes that expectation.
19. Pace & Creativity	Redraw a moment from Natalie’s experience in two panels and then five. Compare how the extra beats change the opportunity for worry, observation, or humor.
20. Play	Explore the title All Is Nat Lost as a playful echo of “all is not lost” that incorporates Nat’s name. Invite students to create a reassuring, character-based title for their own comic.
21. Performance	Perform a short exchange between Natalie and her friends, including silent reactions. Compare a rushed performance with one that allows facial expressions and pauses to register.
22. Personality	Find a choice Natalie makes that reveals more than a general label such as “worried.” Discuss how specific behavior helps readers recognize an individual personality.
23. Humor	Choose a humorous reaction or exchange and examine its setup and payoff. Discuss how humor provides breathing room during the trip’s uncertainty without erasing the problem.
24. Pause	Locate a quiet reaction or a moment with relatively little dialogue. Ask what readers gain by spending time with Natalie’s expression before the action continues.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Use the title’s sound play as an entry into noticing language patterns. Search selected dialogue for sound repetition or figurative language, without assuming that this prose comic uses rhyme or meter.
26. Repetition	Look for repeated expressions, concerns, words, or visual arrangements across Natalie’s trip. If a pattern appears, discuss how its meaning changes as her circumstances change.
27. Rhythm	Read a short panel sequence while tapping once for each conversational or action beat. Compare the rhythm of an exchange among friends with a more reflective moment.
28. Punctuation	Inspect punctuation in a worried or excited exchange. Read the same words with different punctuation to demonstrate how marks influence delivery without replacing visual evidence.
29. Questions	List the questions readers have when Natalie and her friends become separated. Track which questions are answered quickly and which keep readers moving through the sequence.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare Natalie’s expectations for the outing with her experience once difficulties arise. Use matching evidence from dialogue and images to show the contrast.
31. Objects	Select an object actually visible in a trip scene and ask whether it establishes place, supports action, or reveals character. Avoid assuming an object solves the problem unless the panels show that connection.
32. Threes	Check whether a selected comic sequence builds through three beats, such as situation, reaction, and payoff. If it does not, students can test a three-beat adaptation and compare its timing with Scrivan’s original.
33. Lists	Have students list Natalie’s possible concerns or next steps using evidence from the selected scene. Turn the list into separate panels and discuss which items deserve attention and which can be combined.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Study the gutters between panels and the open areas around figures or balloons. Ask how readers infer what happens between images and how uncluttered space directs attention to a reaction.
35. Art & Graphics	Cover the words in a selected sequence and infer feelings from Scrivan’s character drawings. Restore the dialogue and discuss how the two information channels complement or complicate one another.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Use a teacher-created “What should happen next?” prediction game at a decision point in the trip. Make clear that this is a classroom extension, not a claim that the book contains branching choices or game features.
37. Placement	Follow the order of panels and speech balloons in a conversation involving Natalie. Discuss how placement guides the eye and determines when a response or visual joke becomes available.
38. Form	Identify how a graphic novel differs from a prose story and a traditional picture book. Explain how Natalie’s experience depends on sustained sequential art, not simply illustrations accompanying a written narrative.
39. Dummy	Explain that a dummy is a rough page-layout prototype, not a polished comic. Have students make a small folded-paper version of their travel story and test where a page turn best supports uncertainty or reassurance.
40. Passion	Ask which aspect of Natalie’s experience—friendship, unfamiliar places, independence, or uncertainty—matters most to each student. Use that personal interest to choose the emotional center of an original comic rather than claiming to know the author’s private motivations.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: “One Problem, Two Speeds.” Minutes 0–3: Revisit a short sequence connected to Natalie’s separation from the school group; identify the problem and a revealing reaction. Minutes 3–5: Model how an event can be compressed into one panel or stretched across several panels without changing its essential facts. Minutes 5–12: Students create two versions of an original, Natalie-inspired travel mix-up: a two-panel quick version and a four-panel slower version. Both must show a safe response, such as staying in an appropriate safe place and seeking a designated trusted adult; the slower version must add a meaningful expression, observation, or pause rather than simply repeat information. Minutes 12–17: Partners read both versions and identify where the pace changes and how that affects their understanding of the character. Minutes 17–20: Students revise one panel and complete the reflection, “I slowed down ___ so the reader would notice ___.” Younger students may draw and explain orally; older students should identify one specific craft connection to Scrivan’s panels.

Classroom Activities

Lost, Pause, Plan!

Students create a six-panel comic inspired by Natalie’s unexpected difficulties during her Philadelphia trip. Their fictional characters face a small travel mix-up, pause to recognize their feelings, and choose a safe way to seek help. Students then make one moment feel slower and another feel faster through panel size, dialogue, and visual detail. For K–2, use teacher-selected excerpts, drawing, oral storytelling, and dictated captions; for grades 3–5, add independent reading and written explanations.

Lost, Pause, Plan!

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