93 pages • 3 hours read
Margaret Peterson HaddixFound
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The prologue focuses on Angela DuPre, a gate agent at Sky Trails Air. It is her first day at the job, and she sees an airplane appear out of nowhere at her gate. Angela’s boss discovers there are no planes scheduled to land at that time and sends Angela to help with the deplaning process. When no one gets off the plane after several minutes, Angela investigates. The plane has an insignia on its side that reads Tachyon Travel. As Angela watches, the insignia “suddenly changed into the familiar wing-in-the-clouds symbol of Sky Trails” (9). Angela boards the plane, where she finds 36 infants and no one else. Government officials arrive on the scene and swear everyone there to secrecy.
Chapter 1 Summary
Chapter 1 picks up 13 years later. Jonah Skidmore and his new friend Chip Winston play basketball and discuss how Jonah was adopted. Chip asks if Jonah wonders about the circumstances of his adoption, and Jonah confesses he does not. Jonah’s parents think of the adoption as a perfectly timed miracle, but to Jonah, it “wasn’t much more of a deal than his liking mint chocolate-chip ice cream” (13). Jonah’s sister, Katherine, relays that their mother wants Jonah to get the mail. Jonah receives a letter with no return address that says only “you are one of the missing” (20). Jonah dismisses the note as a prank, probably from a kid at school.
Chapter 2 Summary
Despite the note probably being a prank, it angers Jonah. He rips it up and remains upset for the rest of the day. During dinner that night, the doorbell rings. It is Chip, who needs to talk to Jonah alone. They go to Jonah’s room, where Chip says he got “One of those letters. About being missing” (28). Chip had shown the letter to his dad, saying Jonah also got one, and Chip’s dad had revealed Chip was adopted as well.
Chapter 3 Summary
Chip is furious his parents hid this from him. His dad said he “never wanted to talk about this again” (34). This makes Jonah angry. Jonah tries to rationalize why Chip’s parents would hide the truth but cannot. Feeling bad and wanting to be a good friend, Jonah tells Chip he will “do everything I can to help you” (35).
Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis
The prologue sets up the main conflict of the story—that Jonah and the other babies on the plane are from different points in history and were kidnapped to be brought to the future. The plane initially appears to belong to Tachyon Travel, which alludes to the existence of time travel. Later, in Chapter 18, Angela defines tachyons as particles that travel faster than light and hypothesizes that the mysterious plane was a time machine. Angela will come to act as a guide for Jonah, Katherine, and Chip as the kids puzzle out the mystery surrounding Jonah and Chip’s origins. By the end of the book, Jonah and Chip learn they are from the past.
Chapter 1 introduces the main characters of Found. Jonah Skidmore is the protagonist, and as a character, he is unconcerned about his personal history. While his parents gush about the happy coincidental circumstances of his adoption, Jonah does not much care about where he came from. As the story progresses, Jonah must shed his uninterested nature to make finding out who he is a priority. Throughout the book, elements of the mystery frighten Jonah. He tries to remove himself from the situation and become unconcerned again, but the risk to himself, Chip, and, later, Katherine always pulls him back in.
Chip Winston begins the book as a new friend to Jonah. Jonah’s promise to help Chip in Chapter 3 begins a recurring promise throughout the book, ultimately leading to Jonah breaking the rules of time to give Chip a chance to keep his life in the 21st century. In contrast to Jonah, Chip is overly concerned and a worrier. While Jonah treats his adoption as no big deal, Chip’s reaction to learning he was adopted is anger, followed by an obsessive need to understand why. Chip and Jonah are foils. They help one another balance their levels of concern in order to solve the mystery of where they came from.
Katherine, Jonah’s sister, represents Jonah’s conflict of family throughout the story. At the beginning, Jonah thinks of Katherine as an annoying younger sister, like many boys his age might. As the story progresses and Katherine shows her undying loyalty, Jonah comes to trust her and genuinely thinks of Katherine as family, even though the two are not related by blood. Katherine also acts as Jonah’s foil. While Jonah responds to troubling revelations with fear, Katherine takes charge. She faces challenges head on and comes up with solutions to obstacles in the investigation.
The letters Chip and Jonah receive foreshadow events to come and represent the motif of written records. Jonah and Chip are two of 36 kids from the mysterious airplane who went missing in time, and the notes represent one of the opposing factions looking for them. The notes are purposefully vague, since anything recorded (whether on paper or digitally) can be monitored by time travelers.
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