The hunt was inspired by a middle school-level book called Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman. In it, an eccentric publisher hides copies of his books, and puts clues on his website that allow his readers to search for the book. Once found and read, the searcher becomes the hider, and posts a new clue about where the book has been concealed.
It sounded like so much fun that I wanted to replicate the experience in our community!
So one rainy September evening, I hid books for my high school class to find and posted clues on the simplified book hunt section of the website for the book, BookScavenger.com. Using their smartphones or tablets (supplemented with some printed copies of the clues for those who didn’t have access to those technologies), the high schoolers searched out the books I found, then hid other books that has been secretly prepared by the parents for the middle school class. The next day, it was the middle schoolers who were searching, and then hiding additional books for a general book scavenger hunt for our homeschool group.
The following week, a cross-section of our homeschool group early followed the clues that revealed books hidden all around the heart of the downtown area of Cary. We sent them home with they books, but suggested that maybe after they had spent the winter reading them, we might sponsor another scavenger hunt in the Spring.
It was a lot of fun both searching and hiding. And some of the books for each group were never found, so….maybe they are still out there. You can check the website to see clues for the books that were never marked as “FOUND.”