Finders Keepers (Two Books in One) by Emily Rodda

Title: Finders Keepers (Two Books in One)

Author: Emily Rodda

Genre: Adventure

Publisher: Scholastic

Published: 1^st December 2022

Format: Paperback

Pages: 384

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: Patrick loves the excitement of computer games. So he’s even more excited when the computer invites him to play a game of chance called Finders Keepers. He accepts the invitation and becomes a Finder, someone who can cross the Barrier between two worlds and retrieve lost objects. But he’ll need more than luck to win, and time is running out. A special bind-up edition of Emily Rodda’s award-winning Finders Keepers duology. Patrick loves the excitement of computer games. So he’s even more excited when the computer invites him to play a game of chance called Finders Keepers. He accepts the invitation and becomes a Finder, someone who can cross the Barrier between two worlds and retrieve lost objects. But he’ll need more than luck to win, and time is running out. The excitement of Finders Keepers continues in The Timekeeper. Two worlds—the real world and the world across the Barrier—are in terrible danger. Only Patrick can save them from destruction as he makes a desperate bid to win a race against time.

Book Features:

• A stunning bind-up of this thrilling duology for the 31st anniversary of the first release of Finders Keepers.
• Includes Finders Keepers and The Timekeepers, Australian classics that every child should read, both of which have been dramatized for TV.
• The perfect collector’s edition for fans of all ages.
• Finders Keepers won the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book of the Year: Younger Readers award.
• Emily Rodda is Australia’s number one fantasy writer for children.

~*~

First published in 1991, Finders Keepers, and its sequel, The Timekeeper, are Australian classics, and have been read and loved by Australian children since the 1990s. I remember it was a book that was always in my school library, right next to the Teen Power Inc books in the Emily Rodda section. I thought it had disappeared until I stumbled across the new edition that binds the two books together, published by Scholastic. Patrick is the second of three children – his big sister, Claire, who is in high school, and four-year-old little brother, Danny, who always wants to get his way. And it feels like his parents are more focused on his siblings, so Patrick longs to have his own computer, so he can have his own space. Claire escapes to her room to play music or read, but Patrick doesn’t have this. So, when he is given the opportunity to play a game called Finders Keepers on Channel 8 at Chestnut Tree Village. During the game, he has to help three people find lost items – but he has rhyming clues to help him win his prize.

Then, in the Timekeeper, Patrick, Danny, and Claire are sucked across the barrier – both worlds are in danger, and time is moving too quickly, and Patrick must race against time to fix the clock at Chestnut Tree Village to save his world and the world his new friends live in – a race against time itself.

Finders Keepers must be one of the original portal world stories – these sort of stories and books are popular now, and it is always interesting to see how different authors tackle the portal and what they use. Using a television is interesting, and I am glad they early 1990s setting was kept, as I think it made the novels special without dating them with era-specific technology. And I loved that the kids were able to rely on pay phones or agreed on times and places to meet – it’s how my adolescence was and to see it reflected in books is cool, because I think we need to see all sorts of experiences reflected in books and for this story,  I think having technology that was too modern might have made the problems  in the story – the clues, getting back beyond the Barrier, and solving the final mystery – too easy to solve. The late twentieth century setting is also useful to allow new child readers an insight into the world their parents grew up in, and it is presented in a way that is accessible and useful.

I have read many Emily Rodda books over the years, and this is one that I missed when I was younger, but even as an adult, I loved the adventure and thrill of the mysteries and riddles, and even tried to solve them before Patrick could – they were very well written too, so to me, and I hope to other readers, it will be fun to solve them yourself or solve them with Patrick. It’s all up to him – but there is something else going on – has Patrick disrupted something? And what secret is his babysitter, Estelle hiding? Something about her feels strange, and Patrick is determined to find out what is going on. I think this added another layer to the story, and whilst it felt resolved, I could tell there was more to come.

Enter the sequel, The Timekeeper, where both worlds on either side of the Barrier are under threat. Yet things get dicey when on a shopping trip to Chestnut Tree Village to see the clock, which Danny is convinced he will see it chime the same time twice, but instead, the siblings are flung across the Barrier, and have to fix the clock to set things right in a race against time – literally. Where the first book took place over a series of Saturdays, The Timekeeper takes places over a couple of hours on a Sunday, and I think this heightened the tension and action, and drew me further into the story, as I wanted to know if Claire, Patrick, and Danny managed to save time and each other. I was pleased to see beloved characters return. I felt the rising tension as the Barrier started breaking down and the threats to those on the Channel 8 side growing, after so much hope that everything was okay after the first book. It made sense though because it is the kind of thing that someone like Patrick would wonder about, and I liked that we got to see what happened next.

These books are a lot of fun and I think readers aged nine and older will enjoy it, whether reading it for the first time or revisiting a beloved book from childhood. I am enjoying rediscovering books by Australian authors from the 1990s and I hope that we get to see more re-released for readers to discover or re-discover. And I hope more of these books are by Emily Rodda!