With the '39 Clues,' we were making history jump out of the page for the readers, so they don't know they're learning. The kids can't put the books down - it's so exciting.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I loved the idea of making history interesting for kids! When Scholastic approached me about 'The 39 Clues', I immediately started going through the 'greatest hits' from my years as a social studies teacher, and picked the historical characters and eras that most appealed to my students.
I wasn't really conscious about 'The 39 Clues' movie when I wrote 'The Black Circle.'
We've always been fans of a good mystery; we think all kids are, and there weren't any good mysteries out there these days for kids, so that's why we decided to do them.
I'm very aware how many distractions the reader has in life today, how many good reasons there are to put the book down.
We didn't have all the distractions that young people have today. We didn't have these incredible computer games and social networks to engage with. I understand that. But once young readers do discover reading, when they discover a book which they fall in love with, it really unleashes something new in their imagination.
It's our job - as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles - to find books our kids are going to like.
There is nothing better than a really cool mystery: you don't know what's going to happen, so you keep turning those pages or watching that series.
People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.
You know the thing that interests me about 'Unsolved Mysteries?' It's because there are people out there, people who know something, who may have the one final clue.
There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great.