This is for real. Somewhere around the country, twelve emeralds are hidden, and the clues to their location are in the pages of The Clock Without a Face, by Scott Teplin, Mac Barnett, and Eli Horowitz.
I’ve been an admirer of McSweeney’s writing/reading/tutoring community for a while, and even hope to emulate some of their methods here in the Rabbit Room one of these days. They run several inner-city tutoring centers around the country, with the idea that if you can teach a child to write you greatly increase their chance of succeeding in the world. I think that’s true. We’ve long kicked around the idea of opening up Rabbit Room tutoring programs for the purpose of exposing children to great writers, particularly great writers who were/are Christians, and encouraging those children to hone their craft and to treat it as Kingdom work. I geek out just thinking about it.
Back to the treasure. McSweeney’s just published this book, and as far as I can tell the emeralds have yet to be discovered. I just read the book today and laughed out loud exactly three times while reading it. It’s funny, well-written, and really cool to look at. If you remember Graeme Base’s The Eleventh Hour, a picture book mystery you’re invited to solve before you turn the last page, you’ll see its influence on this book. But The Clock Without a Face takes it a step further and ends with a challenge to unearth bona fide, handcrafted emeralds. How cool is that?
Very cool, I say. And I plan to sic my smarter-than-I-am kids on the mystery in the hopes of paying for their college. We have a few copies in the Rabbit Room store, if you’re looking for some adventure.