Imagine: The capital of the United States is Boston…Lincoln’s face is nowhere to be seen on Mount Rushmore…Everyone’s buzzing about the French royal wedding. Now imagine you find the key to time travel in the form of a hand-held device known as the Infinity Ring. You think you can fix things, but you’re being swept up in a secret war for the fate of humankind.

What do you do when history is broken?

Today, we announced the launch of Infinity Ring^™ , an alternate-history time travel series coming to middle grade readers in September 2012. We think you’ll be as thrilled as we are when you learn more about it!

As if an “alternate-history time travel series” wasn’t cool enough, Infinity Ring is more than “just” a book series: it combines books, an interactive “Hystorian’s Guide” map feature (named for a centuries-old secret society featured in the books), and a fully-immersive online game experience where readers travel back in time to fix history. As the publisher of The 39 Clues, we know reading can be both an interactive experience or a solitary one, and that being fully immersed in a book can lead to amazing things. With Infinity Ring, we’ve combined reading, gaming, and history into one incredible series.

Credit: Ken Karp

The team of authors behind Infinity Ring is also a wonder to behold: Book 1: A Mutiny in Time is penned by bestselling author James Dashner (who outlined the overall arc of the series), and subsequent books are written by Carrie Ryan, Lisa McMann, Matt de la Pena, Matthew J. Kirby, and Jennifer A. Nielsen.  The New York Times, in a piece today called “A Children’s Story Series: Will a Game Help Books?”, says “integrating reading with playing games could lure the reluctant readers.”

Infinity Ring launches in September 2012. That feels like a long time away…maybe I’ll go snag one of those time machines myself and try to speed things along.

Are you excited about Infinity Ring? Let us know in the comments.