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The 39 Clues (The Maze of Bones, Book 1)

Author: Rick Riordan
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

29 reviews
Sales Rank: 81

Media: Hardcover
Edition: Hardcover
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.9

ISBN: 0545060397
EAN: 9780545060394
ASIN: 0545060397

Publication Date: September 9, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Also Available In:

•	Audio Download - The 39 Clues, Book One: The Maze of Bones (Unabridged)
•	Hardcover - 39 Clues Maze of Bones (39 Clues)

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Minutes before she died Grace Cahill changed her will, leaving her decendants an impossible decision: "You have a choice - one million dollars or a clue."

Grace is the last matriarch of the Cahills, the world's most powerful family. Everyone from Napoleon to Houdini is related to the Cahills, yet the source of the family power is lost. 39 clues hidden around the world will reveal the family's secret, but no one has been able to assemble them. Now the clues race is on, and young Amy and Dan must decide what's important: hunting clues or uncovering what REALLY happened to their parents.

The 39 Clues is Scholastic's groundbreaking new series, spanning10 adrenaline-charged books, 350 trading cards, and an online game where readers play a part in the story and compete for over $100,000 in prizes.

The 39 Clues books set the story, and the cards, website and game allow kids to participate in it. Kids visit the website - the39clues.com - and discover they are lost members of the Cahill family. They set up online accounts where they can compete against other kids and against Cahill characters to find all 39 clues. Through the website, kids can track their points and clues, manage their card collections, dig through the Cahill archives for secrets, and "travel" the world to collect Cahill artifacts, interview characters, and hunt down clues. Collecting cards helps: Each card is a piece of evidence containing information on a Cahill, a clue, or a family secret.

Every kid is a winner - we'll give away prizes through the books, the website and the cards, including a grand prize of $10,000!

Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

Will Be Wildly Marketed to the Younger Crowd November 30, 2008
Lynn Ellingwood (Webster, NY United States)
I bought this book for my class because some students asked for it. It is very much like many Japanese Manga books whose purpose is to collect and trade cards. The kids will go wild, the adults less so. The book is pretty well written for its kind but is merely busy and goes from one place to another like an amusement park ride. Not too different from you usual Hollywood movie nowadays. I'm sure a movie is in this book's future.

5 out of 5 stars

The Maze of Bones November 20, 2008
Dr. Tami Brady (Calgary, Canada)
Dan and Amy had always felt that they were Grandma Grace's favorites. Ever since their parents had died, she'd always had time to spend with them. She appreciated their gifts and always encouraged their creativity. When she passed, Dan and Amy were deeply saddened. All the relatives showed up at the funeral but really they were all just hoping to get a piece of Grace's vast fortune.

Grace being a rather unique woman herself, arranged to have the last word. After the funeral, a group of the relatives was quickly ushered into a room where the will was to be read. Each person was offered a choice. They could either leave the room with a million dollars or they could get a clue that would lead them on a quest. The first group to find 39 clues would find out something that would make them the most powerful person ever.

As you'd expect, Dan and Amy take their clue and begin the very dangerous journey. The first clue leads them to Benjamin Franklin, a distant relative to the children. It's a journey that takes them across the country and eventually to France. The two experience secret rooms, burning buildings, explosions, and creepy catacombs.

Read the book and then be sure to sign up for the online game. The website includes a variety of different fun interactive games and code breaking exercises that help uncover even more clues. Each week more activities are added.

5 out of 5 stars

Key to the fun November 19, 2008
Kidsreads.com (New York, NY)
If you've heard about Scholastic's maverick, multimedia series, The 39 Clues, and you've come to read this review of the inaugural title, THE MAZE OF BONES by Rick Riordan, with the hopes that I'll share the game-launching clue found at the end of the book, you are about to be disappointed. Share the clue that will start a real world game where readers become potential Cahill heirs and there are thousands of dollars in prizes at stake?* No. I'm better than that.

I have honor! I have integrity! I have an advance reading copy that's intentionally missing the last 40 pages, so even I don't know what the first clue is!**

Here's what I can tell you about the partial advance copy I received. Think of it as THE WESTING GAME meets "The Amazing Race" and together they each power slam a gallon of Red Bull. Reviewing a book that relies on deception and clues to propel its rocket-like plot can be tricky: how do you lay out the action without spoiling the fun? So here's my best attempt at telling you what's going on without ruining what's going on.

Fourteen-year-old Amy and eleven-year-old Dan are part of a very select group: they are two of only a handful of people with blood ties to the powerful Cahill family named in the will of their recently deceased grandmother, matriarch Grace Cahill. These beneficiaries are given a simple choice: they can walk away from the will reading with $1,000,000 and, in doing so, renounce all claims to any other piece of Cahill legacy, or they can surrender this inheritance for something potentially far more valuable: the secret that makes the Cahills the most powerful and influential family in human history. A secret that will be revealed through a worldwide scavenger hunt for 39 clues, of which there can be only one winner. With their parents lost in a fire years before and hoping to flee the guardianship of their tyrannical aunt, the siblings see little choice but to track down the 39 clues in the hopes of securing their futures.

A series of mini-clues involving Benjamin Franklin --- a distant Cahill relative --- sends the pair on a chase that takes them from their home in Boston to Philadelphia and, eventually, across the sea to Paris. Adding a sense of urgency to their quest is the understanding that, never far behind, is a legion of their scheming, underhanded relatives who would do anything to win the game...and the easiest way to be victorious is to take out the competition. Alliances are made and broken, traps are plotted and sprung, and the only rule to live by is the parting advice given to Dan and Amy by their grandmother's attorney: trust no one.

The real world game that readers will be able to play involves clues to be found in books, trading cards and various interactive websites. The books, however, are key to the fun, and if the rest of the series follows Riordan's example (different authors will be contributing titles to The 39 Clues; the second installment by Gordon Korman will be available in December 2008), they will contain riddles wrapped in mysteries inside enigmas and be brimming with Cahill family intrigue. My only concern about where this is headed: can the answer to the mystery live up to the hype? One thing is for sure: it will be a great ride finding out!

* For more information about how the real world game works, check out www.The39Clues.com

** And if I had the clue, why would I give it to YOU? Sorry, folks, but from here on out, it's every Cahill for themselves.

--- Reviewed by Brian Farrey

5 out of 5 stars

my ten year old really enjoyed this book November 18, 2008
ek (longisland)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

fun, interactive.
my son enjoyed searching for clues on the web, he is looking forward to the next book!

5 out of 5 stars

Richie's Picks: THE 39 CLUES November 16, 2008
Richie Partington (Sebastopol, CA United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

If you hadn't yet heard of THE 39 CLUES, you will be hearing all about it soon enough. DreamWorks has acquired the screen rights and Steven Spielberg will apparently direct the movie. As described in Variety (of all places), "THE 39 CLUES," which launches Sept. 9, is envisioned as a 10-book series to be released over two years. It's described as a multimedia adventure that will include a set of collectible cards and an online game that will serve as a portal as young readers try to solve a mystery for a grand prize of $10,000. The contest will run for two years."

Okay. A book with a bunch of gimmicks and prizes, right? Sounds a little fluffy, perhaps?

But the fact is that the first book -- THE MAZE OF BONES -- is great! Not only is it an engaging mystery and thriller, but it also taught me a bunch of neat stuff about geography and history and American cultural landmarks.

"Aunt Beatrice kept driving and muttering about spoiled children. Amy secretly went back to her huge book. The last two days, since they got the news about Grace's death, Amy had been reading even more than usual. Dan knew it was her way of hiding, but he kind of resented it because it shut him out, too.
"'What are you reading this time?' he asked. "Medieval European Doorknobs? Bath Towels Through the Ages?'
"Amy gave him an ugly face -- or an uglier-than-usual face. 'None of your business, dweeb.'
"'You can't call a ninja lord dweeb. You have disgraced the family. You must commit seppuku.
' "Amy rolled her eyes.
"After a few more miles, the city melted into farmland. It started to look like Grace country, and even though Dan had promised himself he wouldn't get sappy, he began to feel sad. Grace had been the coolest ever. She'd treated him and Amy like real people, not kids. That's why she'd insisted they simply call her Grace, not Grandmother or Gran or Nana or any silly name like that. She'd been one of the only people who'd ever cared about them. Now she was dead, and they had to go to the funeral and see a bunch of relatives who had never been nice to them..."

Yesterday I spent Jo's and Harry's birthday up on the Eel River, sitting alongside my favorite swimming hole, trying to figure out what facts might be of help in uncovering a clue. What's the deal with the random page numbering that suddenly appears? What so important about that photo?

The ten books are being written by different, well-known authors. This first one is by rocking writer Rick Riordan of Percy Jackson fame. The second will be by another of my faves, Gordon Korman.

"'And yet, all the previous accomplishments of the Cahill clan are nothing compared to the challenge that now faces you. It is the time for you to discover the greatest secret of the Cahills, to become the most powerful members of the family in history -- or to die trying.'"

Amy and Dan Cahill are orphan siblings. As we come to recognize, each has inherited some of the cognitive abilities of their talented, late parents. At Grace's funeral, it is announced that all the heirs in attendance have a choice: Each individual has the option of taking a check for a million dollars and walking away OR the option of taking a clue that will lead to another clue that will lead to another clue that will eventually lead to the REAL Earth-shaking inheritance.

And -- Shades of Hogwarts! -- when Dan bemoans the "bunch of relatives who had never been nice to them," he's not kidding! There are four different branches of the Cahill clan and it quickly becomes evident that those relatives who, along with Dan and Amy, opt for the first clue rather than the million bucks are going to stop at nothing to get a leg up on the rest of the family.

Of course, Scholastic does not want the relatives of booksellers and reviewers and librarians (not to mention the booksellers and reviewers and librarians themselves) to get a leg up on the general public in solving the mystery of the first book, SO THEY LEFT THE END OF THE DARN FIRST BOOK OUT OF THE ADVANCE COPIES THEY SENT US!!!

Which means that we, too, will be waiting for September 9th, when the fun begins. (You'll find the clock ticking down to the starting gun at the website.

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