Word: authors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...series called The 39 Clues. But things will work a little differently this time. The rules in the magical land of young-adult publishing have changed. The 39 Clues isn't the second coming of Harry Potter. There won't be one. Harry Potter and the Death of the Author...
...very entertaining, and the educational stuff goes down with only the faintest academic aftertaste. (David Levithan, executive editorial director at Scholastic and a young-adult author himself, calls The 39 Clues "subversively educational," by which he presumably means that kids won't notice they're learning, not that the books actually subvert any societal norms.) "It's very much about family dynamics," Levithan says. "That's the heart of it. The most relatable factor about it is that every kid thinks their family is just really strange and large and weird. The idea that you can be born into this...
...engineered is the word. The 39 Clues is, like some lab-grown genetically engineered life-form, a series without a real author. J.K. Rowling conceived Harry Potter on a crowded, four-hour-delayed train trip between Manchester and London. The 39 Clues was born about three years ago in a corporate boardroom. Levithan runs a weekly "idea group" at Scholastic - "basically, about a dozen editors get together every week, and we just brainstorm ideas," he explains. Amy and Dan were one of those brainstorms. (Originally the series was called The 79 Clues before Levithan and co. decided to scale...
...hardly a new approach - young-adult series have often been written by multiple authors under contract, ever since the Bobbsey Twins. The Maze of Bones is by Rick Riordan, a former middle school history teacher who is the author of the best-selling Percy Jackson series, and who also helped flesh out ideas for the other books in the 39 Clues series. "They were very secretive," Riordan says. "They did nondisclosure agreements. I felt like I was working for the CIA!" Riordan's involvement with Amy and Dan will end when Maze goes on sale Sept...
That's one of the advantages of doing business this way, without a single author. By rotating writers, Scholastic can put out 39 Clues novels at Gatling-gun speeds: there will be a total of 10, a new one appearing every three or four months. Another advantage is that it allows Scholastic to retain ownership and control of the intellectual property they're selling. Harry Potter quickly made J.K. Rowling one of the richest women in the world. But Amy and Dan are company property. In the post-Potter world, publishers realize there's too much money at stake...