A book! A book! We'll do a book!

Madison and I have started home schooling for the fall just a little bit early -- although she doesn't know it. She's going to help me write a book that I've been thinking about writing.

The premise of the book, temporarily called The Frontier Team, concerns ten homeschooling kids who all live on the same very long block that backs up to a creek. One day during a flood, one of them notices something stuck in the middle of a beaver dam. After some figuring out the best way to get at the object, they discover that it is a small treasure chest. Inside the treasure chest, carefully preserved, are two pieces of paper. One is entitled "Rules of Detecting" and the other is entitled "Mistakes to Avoid."

The "Mistakes to Avoid" are written in Latin (and will turn out to be the list of logical fallacies).

The "Rules of Detecting" are not rules per se, but 15 REFERENCES to rules throughout children's mystery literature. A rule might look like this:

Paragraph 3, Page 59, Boxcar Children #3

See, it will be both an exciting story and a culturally-literate romp through the best children's mystery literature, meant to get kids excited about reading these other books. I'm thinking Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Boxcars, Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Belden...plus also some of the books that describe how-to-do-stuff-on-your-own such as My Side of the Mountain, Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson. Any suggestions?

The action of the book will partly be the children's divvying up the clues so they can go hunt down what they are and compile the list, and discussing what they mean (especially the Mistakes -- fortunately one of the families studies Latin). The rest of the book will be the children using the rules to figure out the actual mystery: where the treasure chest came from, who composed the rules and when, how it got to them, etc.

I told Madison my plot outline last night as she was going to bed, which may have been a mistake because her brain instantly vroomed up into overdrive. We're working on character sketches today. And then, later, once we come up with the abstract formulation of the rules, I'll have her re-read a bunch of books to see if she can come up with instances of the implementation of the rules so that we have stuff to refer to. Of course, it looks like I'll have to do some speed-reading through children's literature myself.

The other cool thing about the book, which Madison pointed out independently, is that it could be the start of a series, if it's successful. Here, they learn how to "detect." In the following books, they'd use their detecting skills on other mysteries.

Madison has already come up with four of the characters. She LOVES this. And so do I. Her interest may mean that I actually get this written (how many novels have I started? 4? 5?), and that we get it published. I have a probably-absurd confidence that if it gets written, it will be published. (And, fantasizing here: Wouldn't it be great to go on literary promotion tour with the kids? They would absolutely have to come along, of course, given the book's premise. No one would want to hear me without them.)