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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...
...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 it back, probably wisely.) The 39 Clues is overseen by a team of a dozen Scholastic employees, including four editors. Each book in the series will be written...
...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. 9. "It's a little bittersweet not to take it all the way," he says. "But on the other hand it just wouldn't be humanly possible for one writer to write all those books in the amount of time...
...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 to risk letting a mere author get his or her ink-stained hands...