The Sixty-Eight Rooms (Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventure Series #1)

by Marianne Malone, Greg Call (Illustrator)

Overview

The perfect next step for kids who love the Magic Tree House series, time travel, mystery, and adventure!

Almost everybody who has grown up in Chicago knows about the Thorne Rooms. Housed in the deep inside the Chicago Art Institute, they are a collection of 68 exquisitely crafted miniature rooms. Each room is set in a different historic period, and every detail is perfect. Some might even say, the rooms are magic.

But what if on a field trip, you discovered a key that allowed you to shrink so that you could sneak inside and explore the rooms' secrets? What if you discovered that others had done so before you? . . . And that someone had left something important behind?

Eleven-year-olds Jack and Ruthie are about to find out!


 "Irresistible."—The New York Times

"Marianne Malone has tapped into a fantasy that is . . . completely universal."—Chicago Tribune

"A solid story. Recommend this book to fans of Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer."—School Library Journal

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375857119
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	04/05/2011
Series:	Sixty-Eight Rooms Adventures Series , #1
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	163,796
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 7.63(h) x 0.67(d)
Lexile:	730L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

MARIANNE MALONE is the mother of three grown children, a former art teacher, and the cofounder of the Campus School Middle School for Girls in Urbana, Illinois. She and her husband divide their time between Urbana and Washington, DC. This is her first novel. You can visit her Web site at MarianneMalone.com.

Read an Excerpt

Getting up in the morning was always a challenge for Ruthie. It wasn’t waking up that was difficult—it was getting out of bed. She had to scrunch down to the end of her bed and climb out through the narrow opening between her desk and her sister’s dresser. Then she had to be careful where she placed her feet on the floor because the under-the-bed storage bin for her summer clothes didn’t quite fit under her twin bed. It stuck out just enough to trip her or stub a toe. The other difficult part was to avoid waking up her sister so Ruthie could claim the bathroom first. Claire was older and seemed to need much more time in the bathroom before school—or before going anywhere—than Ruthie did. Ruthie didn’t understand why that was but it was an observation she had made many, many times.
 
Claire was nice enough—not horrible like some siblings Ruthie had heard of. But she took up so much time and space. Mostly space. In their little room, Claire’s stuff dominated by far. She had a computer and a big printer on her already larger desk, all her sports equipment, lots of clothes piled everywhere and a growing mountain of college brochures, SAT study guides and application information. Claire was a junior in high school and starting the process of applying to college. Ruthie counted the days till her sister went away to school. Then she would have her own room.
 
This morning Ruthie woke up first and made her way through the small path in their bedroom to the doorway without waking Claire. She looked down the hall—great luck! The bathroom was empty and all hers. Among the kids at her school she was the only one whose family shared one bathroom.
 
Ruthie turned on the shower first to let the water warm up, took her one bottle of shampoo off the wire rack and tried to find a space for it on the shower ledge next to Claire’s and their mom’s gazillion hair care products. It wasn’t easy.
 
As the warm water ran over her back she stood there for a moment, mulling the fact that the shower was just about the only place in her apartment where she could be alone and think privately. She envisioned the day ahead of her, the field trip and what the chances were of something cool happening today. Why not today? After a really exciting or unusual thing happens, do people look back and say, “I thought something would happen today”? Probably not. But why not? Ruthie wondered. Don’t people ever have a feeling,a sign that something great will happen? Her time alone was interrupted when the door to the bathroom opened, not once but three times.
 
From behind the map-of-the-world shower curtain she heard her dad say, “Sorry, Ruthie, I’m just looking for a book I thought I left in here last night.”
 
“Dad, please!” Ruthie said.
 
“Don’t worry, I can’t see anything! Now, where did I put it?” He closed the door. Sheesh!
 
A minute later it was her mom. “Ruthie, have you seen your father’s book on American history?”
 
“Mom, do you mind? No, I haven’t. He already asked me.”
 
“Well, don’t take too long in the shower. Your sister needs to get going.”
 
Right on cue, Claire came in and started brushing her teeth.
 
“Claire, can’t I have any privacy?”
 
“Oh, Ruthie. Don’t be a prude. Hurry up, okay?”
 
Six hundred and thirty-five days till she goes to college, Ruthie groaned to herself. An eternity!


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

The Art Institute of Chicago houses a collection of 68 miniature rooms; this collection is called the Thorne Rooms. Each room represents a different place and time; every detail is perfect, almost eerily so. There's something magical about the exquisite detail in each room, and Ruthie, a sixth grader on a class field trip to the Art Institute, is fascinated. Ruthie and her best friend, Jack, discover a key that allows them to shrink small enough to explore the rooms, but as they do, they come to realize that they are not the first—a previous explorer left something important behind, and Jack and Ruthie try to find a way to return it. This is a lively adventure that weaves together the excitement of being small, a magical setting, and history. Reviewer: Melanie Hundley

Melanie Hundley

Sixth graders Ruthie Stewart and her best friend Jack Tucker are fascinated by the Thorne Rooms, dioramas featuring domestic settings from various historical eras, in the Art Institute of Chicago. In a corridor behind the miniature rooms, Jack discovers a key engraved with the initials CM. When Ruthie touches the key, she shrinks, standing only several inches high. Excited by her transformation, Ruthie quickly explores the room with an elegant canopy bed she admires. The friends scheme to roam through the rooms together when the institute is closed. They see warriors and shooting arrows outside a castle room and concoct stories about their identities when they meet Sophie Lacombe and her tutor Monsieur Lesueur in pre-Revolutionary France and befriend Thomas Wilcox and his family in 1692 Massachusetts, escaping from a crowd frenzied by witchcraft hysteria. Ruthie and Jack find Christina of Milan's journal and other objects, which resolve some issues and present new mysteries. The pair's knowledge of historical events intensifies their concern for their new acquaintances who might suffer harm in impending crises. Their interactions alter those people's lives but do not significantly impact history. Miniature Rooms: The Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago (2004) edited by Elizabeth Stepina, contains photographs of rooms this novel features. One might also pair it with Eve Bunting's The Lambkins (2005). Reviewer: Elizabeth D. Schafer

Children's Literature - Elizabeth D. Schafer

Gr 4–6—Take a key from Alice in Wonderland, add a night at the museum from The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and lace it with time travel. That's the adventure waiting sixth grader Ruthie and her friend Jack when they visit the Art Institute of Chicago on a field trip in Marianne Malone's tale (Random, 2010). Inside the institute sits the Thorne Rooms, 68 legendary miniature rooms each reflecting a different historical period. The magnificence of the rooms captures Ruthie's imagination. In her own simple life, she can only dream about such opulence. When Jack manages to get a backroom peek at the exhibit, he convinces Ruthie to go with him. That's when Jack discovers a magical key tucked into a corner of the floor. When Ruthie touches the key, she shrinks, allowing her to explore the Thorne Rooms. Ruthie and Jack discover that the rooms are much more than historical recreations—they are portals to the trials and tribulations of earlier times. The friends must conquer the challenges confronting them in the different eras or be lost in time. Their wondrous adventure, filled with twists and turns and blending fantasy with history and modern day problems, is sure to intrigue listeners. Cassandra Campbell's narration is spot-on, and her pacing will hold listeners' attention throughout.—Robyn Gioia, Bolles School, Ponte Vedra, FL

School Library Journal