About the series
The Cube Chronicles
The Cube Chronicles is a fifteen-book middle-grade series in which three siblings from a close-knit, faith-filled family discover a mysterious nine-sided cube beneath their backyard shed — a cube that carries them across the ancient world, from the building of the Great Pyramid to the crossroads of the Silk Road, one civilization and one hard-won lesson at a time.
The premise
A nine-sided cube, discovered beneath the floorboards of an old shed, warms and glows a new configuration roughly once a year. When it activates, it carries the Carver children into a real ancient civilization, where they live, learn a craft, make friends, and come home changed. The series follows the children and their parents across fifteen years and fifteen destinations toward the still-unbuilt center of a spiral the cube has been drawing all along.
The Carver family
The series follows the The Carver family of Oakdale, the rural Carolinas (contemporary frame story beginning in 1986).
- Daniel Carver
- Father; a builder and carpenter whose craft and yearly "wisdoms" frame each journey
- Elizabeth Carver
- Mother; a Filipina-American homemaker (from Pampanga) who keeps the family's traditions of faith and hospitality
- Simeon Carver
- Eldest child; a builder like his father who apprentices in a craft on every crossing
- Beckah Carver
- Middle child; the family's record-keeper, reader, and decoder of the cube's signs
- Ellie Carver
- Youngest child; the family's singer and listener, carrier of the songs gathered along the way
The journey
Across fifteen books the cube carries the children to fifteen destinations, each a real ancient civilization:
- Book 1: Ancient Egypt (the Nile Valley, the Great Pyramid of Giza)
- Book 2: Classical Athens (the Parthenon and the Acropolis)
- Book 3: Mohenjo-daro (the Indus Valley Civilization)
- Book 4: A Yellow River highland village (early Bronze Age China)
- Book 5: A Jōmon fishing and pottery village (ancient Japan)
- Book 6: The city of Ur (ancient Sumer, Mesopotamia)
- Book 7: A high terraced village in the Andes
- Book 8: An Amazonian food-forest civilization
- Book 9: The Pacific Northwest salmon coast
- Book 10: The Anatolian highlands (a mountain caravanserai)
- Book 11: Minoan Crete (an unwalled palace town)
- Book 12: The songline country of Aboriginal Australia
- Book 13: The open Pacific (ancient Polynesian wayfinding)
- Book 14: A Silk Road crossroads city
- Book 15: The center of the journey — the road home
Themes
A note on faith and “the Maker”
A guiding, unseen presence the family calls "the Maker" is spoken of with reverence across the series but is never depicted or shown as a visible character. The website preserves that restraint.
About the author
The Cube Chronicles is written by Jeremy Tinder, who writes the Carver family across the ancient world. In his words, the foundation of every good story — like the foundation of every good building — is love.