39 Clues Scavenger Hunt

As a children’s librarian it is my job to come up with new and exciting programs for kids from kindergarten through 8th grade.  Not such an easy task, but probably one of my favorites!  I decided to host a 39 Clues party that is inspired by the hit series the 39 Clues.  Currently, this 10-book series is flying off library shelves.  And after reading all 10 books I can see why.  The series moves very quickly – each book is about 200 pages, but you can’t put it down!

The premise of the story is that 2 orphaned siblings are sent on a scavenger hunt around the world while trying to prevent their relatives from finding the clues before they can.  The clues are promised to make them “the most powerful and influential people on the planet.”  Not only are the books exciting to read, but Scholastic created an entire card-collecting, online game to go along with the stories.  And the plus side – there’s a history and geography lesson within each book – I was even learning some new things! Needless to say, I had to create my own scavenger hunt inspired by The 39 Clues in my library!

I created 3 clues for each book that coincide with a famous person, place, and artifact discussed in the book.  The 4th clue for each book is a word that when combined with all the other 4th clues creates a sentence – “Only together can we fight the true enemy, the Vepsers.”  The clues are questions that each team must research to find the answer in a specific library book where they will also find their next clue.  For example, the questions for Book 2 are:

Question 1 – An armonica is made up of what type of material? (glass)
Question 2 – Who wrote the musical composition The Magic Flute? (Mozart)
Question 3 – What is the capital of Austria? (Vienna)

This program is geared toward grades 3 – 6 hopefully with 3 children to each team and combining the younger and older kids together to encourage teamwork.  With the scavenger hunt, we are also going to have a discussion about the different families that are part of the Cahill family, as well as discuss the new series coming out and the possibility of a movie.  We also created about 15 trivia questions, which kids love to answer.  For a snack, I made sugar cookies in the shape of fish which I plan to ice with red frosting.  Saladin, the children’s cat in the series, will only eat red snapper which is what our snack will be for the night!