Saturday, February 19, 2011

Found (The Missing, Book 1) by Margaret Peterson Haddix

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At the beginning of the novel, a brand-new airline employee, Angela DuPre, experiences an event that she is later told never to talk about.She sees a plane carrying 36 babies, and no one else, not even a pilot. After 13 years, two friends, Chip and Jonah, receive mysterious notes, with messages like "You are one of the missing" and "Beware! They're coming back to get you." Only then does Chip learn that he is adopted, just like Jonah. With the help of Jonah's sister, Katherine, who is not adopted, the boys investigate. They end up discovering that this FBI agent, James Reardon, has to do with their adoptions. Jonah and his family visit him. Reardon avoids offering any information, but on a trip to the restroom, Jonah meets a shady janitor who tells him to secretly look at a file on Reardon's desk and memorize as much as he can. These smart kids do a great job using modern technology like camera phones, photo-editing programs, etc. to get information and track down other adoptees.They call the other adoptees, including one named Daniella McCarthy. Chip calls her early in the morning, asking if she lives at Robin's Egg Lane in Liston, Ohio (near their location); he had read about this in the files that Katherine had taken pictures of earlier in Reardon's office. Daniella says she lives in Michigan and she has never heard about that location, so she hangs up because she doesn't know him. Later that day, she calls back, with a shaky voice, telling him that her parents had just mentioned that address at breakfast and that they had made an offer on the house after discussing it with the children. They also meet a women named Angela DuPre, who was working at the airport for one day, thirteen years ago. She tells them that she believes they came from the mysterious plane that was really a time machine. She also says that she thinks all of the babies were adults and the time machine was an experiment that had somehow gone wrong, resulting in the adults turning into babies. Before she is able to finish her story, the kids have to escape because a man rushes in trying to stop their meeting. The kids later discover they are caught in a battle between two opposing forces that want very different things for Jonah and Chip's lives, and then they both end up at an adoption convention, along with the other 34 children from the mysterious flight! By the end of the book they are trapped by some suspicious characters, learn that they are among the most famous missing children in history, like Virginia Dare, (the first person born in the Americas to English parents) and get sent back in time. This is a great page-turner and there are still two more books to the series if anyone is interested in reading this mystery (Sent and Sabotaged).


Question #1: In Daniella's case, do you think that the FBI could predict the future, because the boys found out about her new house before she did, looking through the files? What do you think the FBI is trying to do?


Question #2: Who do you think are the suspicious characters that trapped them at the adoption convention?



12 comments:

Megan M 1-2 said...

2. I think the suspicious characters could either be FBI agents, or the inventors of the time machine. However I'm not really sure but this sounds like a good book.

Kyle N.1-2 said...

1. Time is a strange thing. You don't really know if the FBI has files from the future, or if it just can predict that kind of thing. I think the FBI is just trying to figure out what's going on. No one understands the workings of time completely.

2. I think the suspicious characters could be the "missing" pilots that want to take them back to where they came from...I don't really know it's just an idea.

Ashlyn W. 7-8 said...

2. I agree with Megan. I also think that the suspicious characters could be the inventors of the time machines. I'm not sure though.

Sarah N. 7-8 said...

1. I think that Kyle has a good point, in the mystery of time. I don't think that the agents truly knew what the future was (unless they had something to do with the time machine). They may have been guessing or following a pattern of the family.

2. I also think that the people could be the inventors of the time machine, or the pilots.

Sara D. 7-8 said...

Sarah and Kyle , I see where you guys are going with this but isn't it weird that after reading the files Chip knew that Daniella was going to move and she had never heard about the new house yet. It's such a coincidence that it was right after Chip had talked to her that her parents told her and her siblings that they found a new house and were planning on buying it, that same exact location and it was by two other adopted kids from the same plane. I understand that time is a mystery but in this book anything would be possible.

Ashley B. 1-2 said...

2) I agree with everyone else in that the suspicious characters are most likely the pilots of the plane or FBI agents. Who else would want to trap these kids if they had nothing to do with the incident?

Sara D. 7-8 said...

Well Ashley, it doesn't tell you in the book but I was assuming thar the suspicious people were the ones who sent them in time in the first place, and they trapped them all because they wanted to take them back (or a different time period). So, not the pilot, but the people that told the pilot where to take the people, who where then adults.

Freddy B. 7-8 said...

1. Maybe the FBI agent was from the future, so he already knew what was going to happen.
2. I agree with Sara. It was probably the people who sent them on the plane in the first place.

AnaleeL7-8 said...

I dont really have a good idea at who the suspicious characters are but my best guess would be the FBI agents.

Brandon Messner said...

1. I think the FBI is trying to prevent them from knowing anything because government stuff is always like that.(of course, I didn't understand the question so there is only a small chance that that answer makes any sense.

2. That was Waldo. Waldo is trapped at the adoption convention on page 5 of "Where's Waldo".

Millie W. 7/8 said...

2) I think they are the people that were trying to bring them to the future for adoption in the first place.

Mrs. Sherwood said...

Thread graded: closed