Sent(ED)

review by Erika D. Jonah is a seventh grade boy that recently (in the prequel to this book,    ** __Found__ ** ) discovered he'd been living out of his time. He had been taken away as a small child from a famous family in a different time, by time travelers from the far future (after the twenty-first century). The time travelers kidnap famous “endangered” kids from the past and bring them to the future to sell off for adoptions, but their time machine broke down. Most of his life, Jonah was friends with Chip (his best friend and also take from another time) and Katherine (his "sister", but technically he's from a different time and she's from the twenty-first century). When Chip and another boy (Alex) are sent back to their proper time, Jonah and Katherine abruptly come along, bringing an Elucidator (a strange machine from the future with many capabilities). JB, the person who zapped Chip and Alex back in the first place, is a time traveler attempting to put all the stolen children back into their times. Chip, Alex, Jonah, and Katherine are now in medieval times and find out that Chip is a king (Edward the Fifth) and Alex in a duke (Duke of York) in this time. In the room where they appear, tracers (glowing models that show exactly what Chip or Alex would be doing if they hadn't been taken away, and only time travelers can see them) of Chip and Alex are shining brightly on the beds. Chip and Alex later find that if they put themselves in the tracers, they become the King and the prince, and can think their thoughts. Eventually, after Jonah makes himself, Chip, Alex, and Katherine invisible, murderers come to try to push Chip and Alex out the window, and real-Chip and real-Alex separate from their tracers at the last second, leaving their tracers to fall. They thought the tracers died and went to see Chip’s coronation, but of course he was missing presumed dead so his mean uncle Richard got the throne. After turning visible again, Chip, Alex, Jonah, and Katherine find out that Chip and Alex’s parents (the previous king and queen) hadn’t been officially married, so Chip couldn’t be king, which is why even if he was found alive he wouldn’t be king. The time-travelers discovered that now they’d have to convince Edward V’s mother that he was dead, not just injured and on the loose. When they got to her room, invisible again, they got //another// surprise: Chip's and Alex's tracers were there, so they’d gotten away alive. Chip and Alex felt compelled to go join their tracers and neither Katherine nor Jonah were physically able to stop them. The mother and her daughters abruptly stopped sobbing when they saw the boys, and fawned over the two. JB pulled Jonah and Katherine out of time to tell them that they just barely saved Chip and Alex that night in the tower with the murderers. They watch the happenings and find that Chip and Alex are safe with their mother, and King Richard’s son is born (the king’s happiest moment) and dies as a child so the king is devastated. JB says that they have to wait two years before messing up time again, so Katherine and Jonah are zapped to two years ahead of where they were taken out. They appeared on a battlefield to collect Chip and Alex. Only after Richard saw Chip and Alex were they allowed to take them out of their Tracers in the battlefield, but Chip and Alex were already in a battle that they were (in the original version of history) supposed to die in. Would Jonah and Katherine save their friends, or would Chip and Alex die medieval king and duke?
 * __Sent__**, Margaret Peterson Haddix

I recommend this book because it's has a really confusing labyrinth-like plot, but at the same time is just on the brink of too much simplicity. It makes sense, but when you're bored you can think over the plot again and it's still interesting. The characters are believable and they show how times have changed so drastically in society. It has its funny moments and deals with the problems of time travel and the hypothetical conflicts traveling through time would cause. All in all, it's a very good story.

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