What Does A New Reader Need to Know?

What parts of the McCracken books really happened?

McCracken is a fictional character, but the world he travels through is real. People in India really do touch one another's feet to express respect; Coober Pedy really is an entire underground city in southern Australia; there really is a whole village on stilts called Nuevo Venezia exactly where I describe it in McCracken and the Lost Temple.

Other things are made up: orichalcum, Corkindrills, the Crown of Queen Tamar, for example. Some of the places are made up, like the village of the Crocodile people in McCracken and the Lost Lagoon and the Land of Zun in McCracken and the Lost Valley.

Sometimes, a thing might be real but McCracken's role is fictional. There really was a Mark V* tank in March 1918, and it really did have all the drawbacks McCracken encountered at the beginning of McCracken and the Lost Cavern; but the test drive in No Man's Land is fictional. Similarly, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin really did take a train from Switzerland to Russia to try to instigate the Russian Revolution. The train was exactly as I described it in McCracken and the Lost Sword, and you can still see it in Sweden. But McCracken, alas, did not drop in for a visit.

If you would like to know if something specific in a McCracken novel was real or is totally made up, assume that all the most interesting things were real, and all the duller things were made up by me. What God invents is more surprising and wonderful than anything people can come up with.

Or you could contact me by email or by writing me a letter, and I will try to answer you quickly.

In What Order Should I Read the McCracken Adventures?
The McCracken Adventures are written so that they can be read independently. You should not need to know anything about the other books to enjoy them in any order you please. It may actually be fun to piece together how certain things develop over time. However, most people like to read them chronologically, so here are the books in chronological order, with their dates:

1. McCracken and the Lost Island (Summer 1913)

2. McCracken and the Lost Valley (September 1914)

3. McCracken and the Lost City (May 1915)

4. McCracken and the Lost Lagoon (January 1916)

5. McCracken and the Lost Lady (May-November 1917)

6. McCracken and the Lost Cavern (March-November 1918)

7. McCracken and the Lost Oasis (Autumn 1919)
   "McCracken and the Lost Spoils" (forthcoming) (November 1919)

8. McCracken and the Lost Vessel (January 1920)

9. McCracken and the Lost Sword (December 1921)

10. McCracken and the Lost Temple (February-March 1922)

11. McCracken and the Lost Fortress (June 1922)
    "McCracken and the Lost Aircraft" (forthcoming) (September 1922)

12. McCracken and the Lost Crown (forthcoming) (September-October 1922)

What age range are the McCracken books written for?
The McCracken Adventures are written for readers in grades 6-10. As a read-aloud, they are good for readers younger than that, though it's a good idea if your Dad can do a wide range of accents when he's reading it. (Hint: He really can do silly voices. It's one of the things Dads do best.) I also have a lot of readers who are a lot older than 10th grade; one avid fan of my books, at our parish in North Carolina, is retired.

Can I actually cook some of the food in the McCracken books?

Yes. You can actually cook the recipes that are in the back of every McCracken book. I hope eventually to have a recipes page here for some of the meals I didn't have space for in the books. There are no desserts in Fritz's Kitchen, but McCracken has eaten some pretty tasty sweets in the books. Keep checking back to see when I finally get that part of the website going.