Word: dan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Clues is a series of novels about two orphans named Dan and Amy Cahill. At the start of the first book, The Maze of Bones, just now appearing in bookstores, their beloved grandmother Grace has just died, and all the far-flung members of the Cahill family have gathered round to hear the reading of the will. They are treated to the astounding revelation that the Cahills are in fact secretly the most powerful family in the world. It turns out that just about everybody important in the history of modern civilization - Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Harry Houdini - was actually...
...world. In Grace's will, each member of the family has been given a choice: either accept a legacy of a million dollars and walk away, no questions asked, or compete in a global scavenger hunt to find and claim the secret. Of course Amy, who's 14, and Dan, who's 11, take Door No. 2. So do six other teams of Cahills. All scamper off in search of the titular 39 clues, aiding and double-crossing and feuding with each other all the while. The hunt leads them to a lot of exotic locations (Philadelphia! Paris!) where they...
Whether he's right about that or not, Amy and Dan are certainly appealing - Dan is nerdy (he's an obsessive collector) and bratty but surprisingly resourceful, and Amy is brilliant but touchingly shy and insecure. The plot ticks along with the iron reliability of an atomic clock. If you forcibly interbred Lemony Snicket and National Treasure and chose the most viable of their mutant offspring, you might come up with something like The 39 Clues. Scholastic is printing a first run of a million copies and holding launch events in seven cities...
Levithan is adamant about not comparing The 39 Clues to its famous older sibling. "We don't ever dream about having another Harry Potter," he says. But the series does share some cosmetic similarities with Rowling's. Harry is, like Amy and Dan, an orphan who discovers that his family history makes him part of a secret, powerful world. The Cahill family is divided into four branches, each with its own distinct personality, just as Hogwarts is divided into four distinct houses. But in another sense Levithan is very right: if you look under the hood you'll find that...
...point across. The casual-garbed Maddow also felt awkward having to "dress like a Senator" on TV. But as her radio work proved, Maddow's a quick study. She got on top of the medium quickly. Certainly the MSNBC brass thinks so. Otherwise they wouldn't have dumped Dan Abrams' The Verdict to make room...