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Author of Book Series Sends Kids on a Web Treasure Hunt
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: September 1, 2008
When Rick Riordan was recently researching the life of Benjamin Franklin for the first book in a new children’s fiction series about the most powerful family in the world, he came across an essay about flatulence written by the founding father better known for his experiments with electricity and awaking early.
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G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times
Rick Riordan with one of his characters, Benjamin Franklin.
Related
Harry Who? (November 13, 2005)
Scholastic Plans to Put Its Branding Iron on a Successor to Harry Potter (December 18, 2007)
“Come on, when you’re writing for kids, that’s just a must right there,” said Mr. Riordan during an interview at the New-York Historical Society, where he sat on a bench in front of a glass case full of busts of Franklin. “It’s an automatic connection. I had to put that in there.”
So far Mr. Riordan (pronounced RYE-r-don) is chiefly known as the author of the popular Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, about the adventures of a young boy who is half Greek god, half human. Now he has written “The Maze of Bones,” the first installment of “The 39 Clues,” a new series that Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter books, is releasing next Tuesday.
Calling upon his experience of 15 years as a middle school English and history teacher, Mr. Riordan sought to fill the book with details that would be educational but also ensnare the average preteen reader.
“My goal in the classroom was always to make sure they were having so much fun that they didn’t realize they were learning,” he said. “I saw ‘The 39 Clues’ as a potential vehicle for doing some education in a fun way — to take some of these amazing stories from history, dust them off and make them alive.”
“The 39 Clues” is planned as a 10-book mystery series for 8-to-12 year olds, with a different historical figure making a central appearance in each one. Scholastic is publishing it on an aggressive timetable, with plans to release one book every two to three months. In addition to writing the first book, Mr. Riordan has outlined the next nine novels, which will be written by other authors.
The story, devised in part by Scholastic’s editors, follows the exploits of Amy and Dan Cahill, two orphans, 14 and 11, who are competing against other branches of the sprawling Cahill family (a clan that has had “a greater impact on human civilization than any other family in history”) to discover the first of 39 clues. Those clues are the keys to a secret that, when revealed, will lead to ultimate power.
Scholastic has deployed its considerable marketing fire power behind the new series, which is tied to a Web-based game (www.the39clues.com) and collectors’ cards. The publisher, which thrived on the enormous success of the Harry Potter novels, is now facing the reality that many children are now as engrossed in the Internet and video games as they are in books.
“The idea is that every aspect will add to the storytelling in its own way,” said David Levithan, an executive editorial director for multimedia publishing at Scholastic. “The Web or card experience is not at all going to replicate the book experience, nor is the book experience going to replicate the Web.”
When giving Mr. Riordan guidelines for writing the first novel, Mr. Levithan and three other Scholastic editors wanted to make sure that the books would complement the Internet game. One instruction was that the 10 books would reveal only one clue per title, leaving gamers to find the other 29 online; another was that the series take place in a number of locales around the world.
Mr. Riordan, who looks the part of a prim schoolteacher, showing up for an interview on a blazing hot summer day in a wheat-colored blazer and dark slacks, said that throughout the writing of the book he checked in with the team of editors at Scholastic, who asked him to add or change details.
He said writing a book with a committee was not selling out, but was in some ways “liberating.” Writing the Percy Jackson books, he said, “was a very solitary experience.”
“The manuscript is pretty much done before I show it to anybody — my editor or even my sons,” he said.
Mr. Riordan said that he always thought of his two sons before embarking on a project. “Are my own sons going to enjoy this book when I’m done with it?” he said. “If the answer is yes, and they’re excited about it, then I’ll probably go ahead and do it.”
The Percy Jackson novels grew out of bedtime stories he told his older son, Haley, now 13, shortly after he was identified as having attention deficit disorder and dyslexia five years ago. Mr. Riordan started by telling Haley the Greek myths, but when he ran out of tales, he invented the story of a modern Greek hero. “Percy was born out of desperation,” he said.
At Haley’s request, Mr. Riordan, who had by then already published five detective novels for adults set in and around his native San Antonio, decided to write a manuscript for what became “The Lightning Thief.”
The book was sold at auction to Miramax Books in 2004 for a low six-figure sum, enough for Mr. Riordan to quit his teaching job and focus full time on writing. The first four books in the series have sold nearly 1.5 million copies, according to figures from Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 70 percent of sales.
Mr. Riordan has just completed the fifth and final book in the Percy Jackson series, now published by Hyperion Books, a division of Disney. That will be released next May. The film version of the first book, which was optioned by Fox 2000, a division of 20th Century Fox, is being directed by Chris Columbus, the director of the first two Harry Potter movies; it is scheduled to come out in November 2009.
Mr. Riordan is working on a new fantasy adventure, as well as another book, based on new characters, set at Camp Half-Blood, where some of the action of the Percy Jackson novels takes place.
He will also continue to provide feedback to Scholastic as its editors send him subsequent manuscripts from the 39 Clues series.
Despite the fact that he is writing full time, he says he still feels like a teacher because he meets so many children on book tours. “I see hundreds of kids at a time rather than knowing one classroom very well,” he said.
“My modus operandi hasn’t really changed that much from when I was an English teacher,” Mr. Riordan added. “I wanted my students to leave my classroom loving reading and wanting to read more, and if they left my classroom thinking that reading is boring, then I haven’t done my job.”
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: September 1, 2008
When Rick Riordan was recently researching the life of Benjamin Franklin for the first book in a new children’s fiction series about the most powerful family in the world, he came across an essay about flatulence written by the founding father better known for his experiments with electricity and awaking early.
Skip to next paragraph
G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times
Rick Riordan with one of his characters, Benjamin Franklin.
Related
Harry Who? (November 13, 2005)
Scholastic Plans to Put Its Branding Iron on a Successor to Harry Potter (December 18, 2007)
“Come on, when you’re writing for kids, that’s just a must right there,” said Mr. Riordan during an interview at the New-York Historical Society, where he sat on a bench in front of a glass case full of busts of Franklin. “It’s an automatic connection. I had to put that in there.”
So far Mr. Riordan (pronounced RYE-r-don) is chiefly known as the author of the popular Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, about the adventures of a young boy who is half Greek god, half human. Now he has written “The Maze of Bones,” the first installment of “The 39 Clues,” a new series that Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter books, is releasing next Tuesday.
Calling upon his experience of 15 years as a middle school English and history teacher, Mr. Riordan sought to fill the book with details that would be educational but also ensnare the average preteen reader.
“My goal in the classroom was always to make sure they were having so much fun that they didn’t realize they were learning,” he said. “I saw ‘The 39 Clues’ as a potential vehicle for doing some education in a fun way — to take some of these amazing stories from history, dust them off and make them alive.”
“The 39 Clues” is planned as a 10-book mystery series for 8-to-12 year olds, with a different historical figure making a central appearance in each one. Scholastic is publishing it on an aggressive timetable, with plans to release one book every two to three months. In addition to writing the first book, Mr. Riordan has outlined the next nine novels, which will be written by other authors.
The story, devised in part by Scholastic’s editors, follows the exploits of Amy and Dan Cahill, two orphans, 14 and 11, who are competing against other branches of the sprawling Cahill family (a clan that has had “a greater impact on human civilization than any other family in history”) to discover the first of 39 clues. Those clues are the keys to a secret that, when revealed, will lead to ultimate power.
Scholastic has deployed its considerable marketing fire power behind the new series, which is tied to a Web-based game (www.the39clues.com) and collectors’ cards. The publisher, which thrived on the enormous success of the Harry Potter novels, is now facing the reality that many children are now as engrossed in the Internet and video games as they are in books.
“The idea is that every aspect will add to the storytelling in its own way,” said David Levithan, an executive editorial director for multimedia publishing at Scholastic. “The Web or card experience is not at all going to replicate the book experience, nor is the book experience going to replicate the Web.”
When giving Mr. Riordan guidelines for writing the first novel, Mr. Levithan and three other Scholastic editors wanted to make sure that the books would complement the Internet game. One instruction was that the 10 books would reveal only one clue per title, leaving gamers to find the other 29 online; another was that the series take place in a number of locales around the world.
Mr. Riordan, who looks the part of a prim schoolteacher, showing up for an interview on a blazing hot summer day in a wheat-colored blazer and dark slacks, said that throughout the writing of the book he checked in with the team of editors at Scholastic, who asked him to add or change details.
He said writing a book with a committee was not selling out, but was in some ways “liberating.” Writing the Percy Jackson books, he said, “was a very solitary experience.”
“The manuscript is pretty much done before I show it to anybody — my editor or even my sons,” he said.
Mr. Riordan said that he always thought of his two sons before embarking on a project. “Are my own sons going to enjoy this book when I’m done with it?” he said. “If the answer is yes, and they’re excited about it, then I’ll probably go ahead and do it.”
The Percy Jackson novels grew out of bedtime stories he told his older son, Haley, now 13, shortly after he was identified as having attention deficit disorder and dyslexia five years ago. Mr. Riordan started by telling Haley the Greek myths, but when he ran out of tales, he invented the story of a modern Greek hero. “Percy was born out of desperation,” he said.
At Haley’s request, Mr. Riordan, who had by then already published five detective novels for adults set in and around his native San Antonio, decided to write a manuscript for what became “The Lightning Thief.”
The book was sold at auction to Miramax Books in 2004 for a low six-figure sum, enough for Mr. Riordan to quit his teaching job and focus full time on writing. The first four books in the series have sold nearly 1.5 million copies, according to figures from Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 70 percent of sales.
Mr. Riordan has just completed the fifth and final book in the Percy Jackson series, now published by Hyperion Books, a division of Disney. That will be released next May. The film version of the first book, which was optioned by Fox 2000, a division of 20th Century Fox, is being directed by Chris Columbus, the director of the first two Harry Potter movies; it is scheduled to come out in November 2009.
Mr. Riordan is working on a new fantasy adventure, as well as another book, based on new characters, set at Camp Half-Blood, where some of the action of the Percy Jackson novels takes place.
He will also continue to provide feedback to Scholastic as its editors send him subsequent manuscripts from the 39 Clues series.
Despite the fact that he is writing full time, he says he still feels like a teacher because he meets so many children on book tours. “I see hundreds of kids at a time rather than knowing one classroom very well,” he said.
“My modus operandi hasn’t really changed that much from when I was an English teacher,” Mr. Riordan added. “I wanted my students to leave my classroom loving reading and wanting to read more, and if they left my classroom thinking that reading is boring, then I haven’t done my job.”
