Gordon Korman: One False Note

Canadian author Gordon Korman is poised to benefit from the massive marketing muscle Scholastic is putting behind The 39 Clues. Korman is one of 10 authors lined up to pen the series, which tells the story of a brother and sister who discover they belong to “the most powerful family the world has ever known.” His installment – due in December – is titled One False Note, and it will follow close on the heels of the debut installment by Rick Riordan, titled The Maze of Bones. (Other contributors confirmed to date are U.S. authors Peter Lerangis and Jude Watson.) Each title features the same characters, but wrestles with a different historical topic and is set in a different international location.

“It was developed from the very beginning as a fully integrated program of content,” says Scholastic Canada director of marketing and publicity Denise Anderson. “The books, the games, the cards – [they] were all orchestrated at the same time.”And David Levithan, executive editorial director of Scholastic U.S. – who is one of the creative forces behind the series – adds that he hopes The 39 Clues will appeal to children who are typically more interested in video games than in books. “Are you a reader? Are you a gamer? Most kids will do both if they are suitably intrigued,” he says.

For his part, Korman has no qualms about the top-down arrangement, though he admits to some trepidation when he first read Riordan’s manuscript. “But invariably,” he says, “when I wrote my own book, the parts of it I had the most fun with were where I continued the strands I was most apprehensive about [in the original].”

“It seems like it has a lot of things behind it, not the least of which is a ton of money and marketing, but in the end it comes down to whether or not kids like it,” Korman says. “We’ve got everything going for us, but the truth is that the books have to succeed as books.”