Posts Tagged ‘Adoption’

The Missing Book 2: SENT

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

sentAuthor, Margaret Petersen Haddix doesn’t disappoint in The Missing Book 2: Sent, the sequel to Found.

“`Jonah,’ JB protested.  `You don’t know what you’re talking about. Certain things have been set in motion.  Chip and Alex have to go to the fifteenth century.’

`Then Katherine and I are going too,’ Jonah said.  He didn’t know how it was possible, but he could feel time flowing past him, scrolling backward.  He felt like he had only a few more seconds left to convince JB. `What if…what if we could fix the fifteenth century? Make everything right again?  Then couldn’t Alex and Chip come back to the twenty-first century with us?’”

As Found concluded, Jonah, Chip, Alex and the 33 other adoptees had just been told that they were missing children kidnapped from history. Just as Chip and Alex were being returned to the 15th century, their true place in history,  Jonah and Katherine grabbed onto Chip and were also sent through time.

Chip’s true identity is Edward V, king of England, and Alex is his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York. Chip and Alex turn out to be the missing princes from the Tower, supposedly murdered by their uncle, Richard III.

JB promises that if the kids can “fix time,” he will allow them to return to the present day. But how can they possibly return home safely when history claims that Chip and Alex were murdered? The story climaxes on the battlefield at Bosworth.

I really enjoyed the element of the tracers. Tracers are the ghost image of themselves following time as it originally would have happened.  It provided an excellent visual to the concept of time travel existing simultaneously next to how time is being altered. I like how the book manages to blend science fiction with historical fiction.  Haddix leaves all the known facts about the characters and time period untouched and embellishes the unknown to create an original new tale.  These books are a complex and mature answer to The Magic Tree House series.

The Missing Series is planned for seven books tentatively titled, Found, Sent, Sabotage, Stranded, Caught, Kept, and Revealed.

GENRE: Science Fiction

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Posted in Science Fiction |

Found: The Missing Book 1

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

foundToday I want to highlight the first book in a series by Margaret Peterson Haddix titled Found (The Missing).  This is one of those Holy Grail’s in children’s fiction that never disappoints.  I have yet to place it in the hands of a student who came back to me and was disappointed.  In fact, the only negative comment I have ever received was that part two had yet to be released.  Which brings me to the timing of this post.  If you start the book now, you can be in line on August 25th when the second book in the series is released called Sent.sent

The novel Found opens with a plane arriving at an airline gate unnoticed by radar and most personnel. There are no flight attendants, no pilot, in fact no adults at all, but in each individual seat there is an infant, 36 in all.

Thirteen years later we meet Jonah who has always known that he was adopted, and he’s never thought it was any big deal. Then he and a new friend, Chip, who has only recently discovered that he also is adopted, begin receiving mysterious letters.

The first one says, “You are one of the missing.”

The second one says, “Beware! They’re coming back to get you.”

“Jonah, Chip, and Jonah’s sister, Katherine, are plunged into a mystery that involves the FBI, a vast smuggling operation, an airplane that appeared out of nowhere — and people who seem to appear and disappear at will. The kids discover they are caught in a battle between two opposing forces that want very different things for Jonah and Chip’s lives.

Do Jonah and Chip have any choice in the matter? And what should they choose when both alternatives are horrifying?”                                                                                                                                                                                                                             -Product Description

 

Appropriate for 4th grade and up. If used in a classroom, the revelation of the babies’ identities can be used to kick off a history lesson or two. Also discussions about the book’s ideas about time travel — the Paradox and the Ripple . Could time travel really be possible? How could a small change in the past ripple through time? Is it possible to change anything in the past without affecting the present and future? Would it be possible to stop yourself from being born? This book’s exciting premise and cliff-hanger ending will leave readers on the edge of their seats caught up in the intensity and immediacy that I just don’t find in many other books.

GENRE: Science Fiction

Discussion Questions Link Here

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Posted in Juvenile Fiction, Science Fiction |

Somebody Else’s Daughter

Monday, June 15th, 2009

daughterElizabeth Brundage introduces us to a large cast of characters in her second breakout novel titled Somebody Else’s Daughter. While I appreciated The Doctor’s Wife by Brundage, this book suffers from a similar problem of unlikeable characters.
In 338 pages, Aids, drug addiction, pornography, murder, domestic violence, and bulimia over shadow a story about a failed writer who gave up his daughter seventeen years previously and sets out to teach at her prep school in an attempt to look in on her.
This book is about a collision between two fathers, biological and adoptive. It’s about a breakdown in the stereotype of “Pillars of the community,” and an artist, finding herself as she returns home while losing her son simultaneously.
Every character in this story has a secret and Brundage takes her time developing each of their various stories and bringing them to the climax where you recognize the ripple effect each has on one another. I struggled with reading through the horrible descriptions of the things they endure and personally felt it was just too unnecessarily graphic. In addition, some of the scenes were very explicit to the point of poor taste.

The slow pace and heaviness of the novel do not do justice to the theme that our actions have consequences and that we should see all women as “somebody else’s daughter.”
GENRE: Realistic Fiction

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Posted in Realistic Fiction |