Customer Reviews

Found (The Missing, Book 1)

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I'm a children's librarian so I get to see a lot of children's books pass through my hallowed public library doors. Lots. But a person can't see everything so once in a while I like to traipse down to my friendly neighborhood bookstore to see what's on the shelves. I skip into the children's section, peruse the titles there, skim one or two just to see if I'd like to read them later, and that's it. End of story. Normally. This past week-end I skipped in as per usual and skimmed the titles of the new fall releases. A new P.E. Kerr... something by F.E. Higgins... and a new Margaret Peterson Haddix. Now there's a treat! I'm not the biggest Haddix fan in the world but I'm rather fond of her style. Kids love her Shadow Children series and Running Out of Time was a fun concept (so much so that perhaps director M. Night Shymalan thought so too). But I've never really fallen for a Haddix novel, you know? The writing just usually doesn't do it for me. Maybe it's the tone or the content or something, but I wasn't really digging the Haddix. Until now. You see, as I sat down in the bookstore's café to read a chapter I found myself sucked into the story. Does it contain some lickety split action sequences and leaps that stretch at my adult credulity? Sure. But I also feel that this may be some of Haddix's best work. It doesn't necessarily stand on its own due to its cliffhanger ending, but if you want to hand a kid something fun, fast-paced, and deeply mysterious then this is the book to surrender.

Thirteen years ago an airline attendant saw something impossible. When the plane appeared on the tarmac it somehow appeared without anyone realizing it had landed. Stranger still, it contained no pilot, no crew, no adults at all. Just thirty-six babies strapped in their seats. Fast forward to present day when new friends Jonah and Chip check the former's mailbox. There, resting inside is an unsigned note that simply reads, "You are one of the missing." A cruel prank? It certainly seems that way until Chip gets the same letter. Then they both get a follow-up that reads "Beware! They're coming back to get you." They? They who? There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to the notes until Chip discovers that he and Jonah have something in common. They were both adopted. And with the help of Jonah's sister Katherine there's more to discover. Why does an FBI agent have information about the boys' birth parents? Why did Katherine see a man appear and disappear in an office one day? Who's been sneaking around Jonah's room, looking through his things? And what's the real story behind that plane? The answers lead the kids to discover their connection to seemingly impossible events.

I'm a sucker for books that contain anonymous notes. Such letters appear in stories like The Mailbox by Audrey Shafer and you librarians out there will understand what I mean when I say that they make it easy to booktalk titles. I also love mysteries, frightening moments, and plucky protagonists. Actually that final item is a bit odd in this book. Though our hero in this story is clearly Jonah, the boy spends much of the novel with his fingers in his ears going "LALALALALALALA!" while his friend and sister do much of the investigating on his behalf. Credit where credit is due, though. The kids really do discover a ton of information, and in a way that makes sense to the plot and is plausible. Anytime a kid in a book breaks into a locked room with a hairpin my eyebrows make a break for my hairline and it takes a while to coax them down. No coaxing was required as I read Haddix's novel. My eyebrows remained firmly in place the entire time.

Authors today face several conundrums when it comes to writing contemporary realistic (or realistic-ish) fiction. First of all, how are your child characters living in the suburbs getting around? It's not as if a lot of suburban kids take the bus, after all. Like most authors, Haddix goes for the old bike riding solution. The next problem? Cell phones. In the past your characters would find themselves in a perilous situation and be helpless and unable to alert anyone to their location. Cell phones, fortunately, can only work where there's a signal so chalk that up to another problem solved. It's easy to work around contemporary technology, but a good writer should make use of it. If a kid has a phone with camera capabilities, then that should come in handy. And Haddix definitely sees electronic devices as a way to aid and abet the action rather than hinder it. Other authors take note. Sure, technology changes but when it comes to something like cell phone cameras such devices will be around for a while. Might as well make your book believable by utilizing them.

Okay. So here's my official SPOILER ALERT warning. If you would like to be surprised by the secret of this book, stop reading this review right now. I liked it. Nuff said.

They gone? Great. As those of you who have read the book are aware, the secret behind this story is that the babies on the plane is that they're all famous children that died sometime in history. The Lindbergh baby. The kids that Richard III slaughtered. Princess Anastasia (and her little bro). People from the future pay big bucks to raise such kids, but we never really learn who Chip and Jonah are. We can probably rule out the children mentioned in the book, so who does that leave? My hope is that Jonah will turn out to be The Dauphin. That'd be pretty cool, right? As for Chip, why not Henry VIII's kid, Edward VI? Both are famous in history. Both would yield fascinating speculations. That's just my two cents.

Haddix is certainly not flying by the A Sound of Thunder rules of time travel here, by the way. People can apparently make fairly large changes to the past without worrying about how the ripple affect is going to damage the future. Apparently it isn't until you're plopping babies from the past into the twenty-first century that things start to get messed up. How nice that the universe is so flexible. It certainly should be a load off of time travelers' minds, that's for sure.

I've heard some people voice objections to the book in terms of the action sequences. Is it plausible that two kids would be able to make a last minute plan when they both bend down to tie a shoelace? Meh. And as for the fight scenes, maybe they aren't the greatest I've ever encountered but they didn't sufficiently distract me from the rest of the book to keep me from enjoying it. Haddix isn't going to win any major literary awards with this novel, but she'll probably garner more than a few kids choice medals and ribbons. And quite frankly, that's the kind of stuff you need to keep in your library. Haddix is a crowd pleaser at heart along the lines of fellow three-namers Mary Downing Hahn or Willo Davis Roberts. But for what it's worth, I think she improves as she goes. Found is undoubtedly the book of hers that I've enjoyed the most. Looking forward to the sequel.

This is Haddix at her best. She's back to sci-fi and the start of a new YA series - hold onto your seats you're in for a page-turning thrill! When the story opens a plane appears out of nowhere filled with 36 babies and no crew. Once the babies are removed from the plane it disappears. That story line is dropped and we pick up a story in suburban America with the protagonist, a well-adjusted adopted child and a friend who has recently found out he's adopted and has been rocked by the news. The story continues with a threatening FBI man, mysterious letters to the kids to beware, people who appear and disappear at will, a very strange conference for adoptees, and then a little time travel. Haddix has the reader flipping pages at break-neck speed from the prologue to the end. On the last page the reader is left panting for more, yet he will have to wait for the sequel.
This novel kept me on the edge of my seat and I'm looking forward to sharing it with my students in the weeks to come.

My husband and I both read this book after becoming intrigued by a book review that we encountered. We were not disappointed. Yes, the book was written for children but don't be put off by that. It was fast-paced and engaging from beginning to end. We are impatiently waiting for the next of the series.

Try as hard as I could my daughter just never loved reading. I would buy books, take her to book stores - nothing.
There was a book fair at school and she bought this book. She started reading it on the busride home. She has not put it down since. She is loving the suspense of the story. And for the first time in her life when I called her she replied"Just one more chapter?" That is something I will never forget.

I can't thank the author enough. She has turned my non-reader into a reader. And I am buying her other books as well. Thank you for opening the world of reading to my daughter.

One thing I love about this book is that it's such a great sell to my tweens and teens. They love anything written by Margaret Peterson Haddix, so they were thrilled when this book came out. Add in a short suspenseful booktalk and they're off reading which makes this librarian smile.

The audiobook for this book wasn't wonderful, but it wasn't terrible either. The narrator had a soothing tone that actually added to the suspense of the story. There were several times I didn't want to turn it off because I wanted to know what would happen next. The voices weren't very distinct though, which made the characters blend together at times.

The story itself is great and has a neat twist that I hadn't figured out. There's plenty of action and suspense to keep readers reading well into the night.

Right after I picked up my copy, one of my teens came up to me and said he had just listened to the audiobook and did I know when the sequel was coming out because he couldn't wait! After finishing this one, I have to agree. SENT (THE MISSING BOOK 2) is out on August 25th, and if you're not a fan of cliffhanger endings, I would wait to read FOUND!

I was between books and asked my 9 year old son for a recommendation. He gave me the book 'Found' with assurances that I would really like it. I didn't want to disappoint him by saying it was probably too juvenile for me to really enjoy it so I took it to read before bedtime. Somewhere around midnight I reluctantly made myself put it down. It was a definite page-turner. Can't wait to go to the library tomorrow and pick up the next book.

Well I am completely in love with this book. I love how suspenseful it is. It's one of those edge-of-your-seat type books. Now I will give a fair warning to those people who haven't read the book that this review is a complete spoiler. So if you haven't read the book, don't let me spoil the surprises for you.
The book starts out when Jonah (who is adopted) gets a letter saying "you are one of the missing". Jonah calls his best friend, Chip, over to see it. Chip thought it was a joke until he gets the same letter and asks his dad if he is adopted. When he finds out he is adopted the boys get curious and start looking into it. In Chip's anger at his parents, Chip and Jonah snoop through Chip's house until they find a phone number for the adoption agency Chip was supposedly from. When the boys dialed the number a government worker picked up. The boys immediately hung up, but were curious about why the government was involved in an adoption. The next day Jonah got another letter. This one says "Beware, they're coming back to get you". Later on the next day Chip also got one. Jonah had asked his parents about finding out more about his adoption. His parents were more than happy to make him comfortable with his adoption, so his father called the agency they got Jonah. There was in fact new of information on Jonah's file. It had the name of a man that had information about Jonah. It was James Reardon, the same man who Jonah and Chip had called. Because Jonah wanted to know more his parents arranged a meeting with Mr. Reardon. After Mr. Reardon informing Jonah's parents that he could tell them nothing, and that Jonah's case was top-secret information for the FBI, Jonah felt sick to his stomach and went to the bathroom to vomit. After he was done a mysterious man in a janitor suit told Jonah that when he went back to Mr. Reardon's office there would be a file on the desk, and that he had to somehow find a way to look in the file and memorize as many names as he could. When Jonah came back to the office there was a file on the desk. Jonah needed his sister, Katharine's, help to get the information though. He needed to distract Mr. Reardon so his sister could get a look at the names. Jonah distracted the adults while Katherine took pictures of the file with her phone. Afterwards they went to Chip's house and downloaded all the names and phone numbers to his computer to get a better look at them. Katherine Chip and Jonah called seventeen the people on the list and found out everyone they talked to is adopted, they're all thirteen years old, and they all live in about the same area, either Liston or Upper Tyson or Clarksville, Ohio. When Chip went to his mailbox he found a letter from one of the people he called. She had written him a letter saying that she could not tell him anything she knew on the phone, but she would agree to meet him at the library and tell him about what she "witnessed". The kids agreed to go there and meet with her and she told them her story about how thirteen years ago she, a worker at SkyTrails Airlines, had seen a plane vanish from thin air and appear at the station. When she went on the plane to help the passengers unload she found no-one. The plane was full of babies, and the FBI came and made everyone swear not to ever speak of the incident again. And when the babies were unloaded the plane vanished yet again...and Angela was the only one who saw it. Later Jonah's parents get a brochure in the mail about a conference for adopted teens and their parents and ask Jonah if he wants to go. He of course wants an excuse to try to talk to the adopted kids that were on the FBI list but he has his parents take Chip and Katherine too. The names of the kids were called out and they were lead to a cave by two men. Katherine, Jonah, and Chip recognized most of the names on the list. Much to Jonah's dismay, the rock wall started grinding shut, and all the kids were trapped with the two men. All of a sudden the janitor who had talked to Jonah about the file tackles, coming out of nowhere, tackles one of the men. The other man pulls out what looks like a gun and fires it to calm down the kids who were trying to help the janitor. But Angela comes out of the shadows and stuns the man with the gun. His gun falls out of his hand and Jonah hurriedly scoops it up. Since both men were down Angela got some rope to tie them up. Then the janitor asked Jonah to give him what he called the "elucidator". Jonah refused to give it up until he had answers though and Chip, Katherine, and Jonah tied him up too. After the men gave him the code to unlock the cave door, Jonah looked out the cave and saw...nothing. Just blackness. So all the men explained that all the children in the cave had been kidnapped from an important time in history and that they were all famous. And the janitor wanted to return the kids to their rightful place in history, that the other men had kidnapped.
Now if that doesn't interest you I don't know what will. But I'm not going to give away the whole story. You'll have to read the rest of the series and find out. I'm sure you'll love it.

Reading Comprehension Book Project
Written Book Review
By Jack Murphy


Book: Found
Author: Margaret Peterson Haddix
Edition: September 2008
Date: 7 March 2009


This book is about a mystery involving 3 friends two are adopted and the third is the sister of the first child. These 3 friends start getting strange mail with no return address saying "you are one of the missing" and "beware they are coming back to get you".

The main characters are:
Jonah Skidmore: A smart basketball player who is the main character
Chip Winston: One of Jonahs friends who found out he is adopted in the first chapter
Katherine Skidmore: Jonahs back talking sister who somehow gets involved

This book takes place in Linstin, Illinois in the time period of the present.

In this story Jonah starts to question his adoption so his parents arrange a meeting with FBI officer James Reardon to try to learn more about Jonah's adoption. When they get to Mr. Reardon's office he tells them that Jonah was found on a plane that came out of nowhere that was involved in a smuggling operation. Mr. Reardon tells them that case remains unsolved but Jonah wants to learn more and he's about to. While at Mr. Reardon's office Jonah gets up to go to the bathroom he sees a strange janitor on the way. When he gets in the stall he sees the man again "listen up" says the janitor you need to memorize as much as you can on the files in Mr. Reardon's office. Jonah doesn't know why but he does what he is told. In fact he does better he gets pictures. When he looks at the files the shocking truth is reveled.

I liked this book because it was a complete page turner making me want to buy the sequel. This book was very exciting because you would never know what happens next. This book is definitely worth buying.

Other people would like this book if they like a suspense book that is long and that you can't let go of.

My favorite part was definitely the ending. I loved the twist, I just never saw it coming yet it made sense that was the best part.

I definitely liked this book and I am sure that YOU will too. So get some money and buy this BOOK!!!

I read this book to my eight-year-old and neither of us could put it down. The two best things about it were that it had lots of twists and turns but never left us asking "Huh?" Also, even though it was a big kid book in terms of plot, it contained nothing too mature for a second grader. As a bonus, at the end, my son learned a new word: "cliff-hanger." We're eagerly awaiting book two.

Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix is book 1 of a planned trilogy. I first learned about Haddix from her popular Shadow Children series, which are full of action. Found also fits this criterion, as it was a book I had trouble putting down.

The main character in Found is 13-year-old Jonah. He was adopted as a baby and lives with his parents and sister in Ohio. One day, he is outside playing basketball with a friend Chip when he receives a strange note in the mail in an envelope with no return address. It reads, "You are one of the missing." He thinks it is a joke, although it disturbs him a bit, so he keeps playing.

Later, Jonah and his family are eating dinner, when a frantic Chip comes to the door looking for Jonah. He received the same note as Jonah, and after talking to his parents, was astonished to learn that he was adopted.

Soon, Jonah and Chip each receive a second note along the lines of "They're coming to get you." Chip wants to investigate, but Jonah is very reluctant to help, so he enlists the help of Jonah's sister, Katherine. Their work leads to an FBI agent, a list of other kids, and a woman named Angela DuPre who relays a story about a mysterious plane full of babies and time travel.

The book culminates when Jonah is invited to attend a local conference for adopted children and their families. He brings Katherine and Chip along, and they realize that nearly every child on the list they found is at the conference. The kids are separated from their parents to go on a hike to a secluded location where they learn the unbelievable truth about their adoptions. I don't want to say any more and give it away.

Found is an enthralling blend of adventure and science fiction. Haddix keeps the story moving with a series of small mysteries that have resolutions leading to other mysteries. Jonah, Katherine and Chip are clever, but not unrealistically so, and have to work together to solve problems. The ending was surprising to me but left me eagerly anticipating the second book. I will definitely be recommending this to some of my students.