Accidental Adventure Books in Order

The Accidental Adventure series follows eleven-year-old twins Oliver and Celia Navel, who have one major goal in life: avoiding adventure. They would prefer a couch, a television, and a day with absolutely no danger.

Unfortunately, they were born into the wrong family.

The twins live with their famous explorer parents at the Explorers Club, where globe-trotting stunts and impossible discoveries are treated as ordinary business. Oliver and Celia have already been dragged along on enough trips to know that jungles, mountains, and ancient ruins are much less fun than adults make them sound.

In We Are Not Eaten by Yaks, their mother goes missing, and their father makes a reckless bet with the awful Sir Edmund S. Tithletorpe-Schmidt III. If he cannot make a great discovery, the twins may be forced into Sir Edmund's service until they finish high school. To save their family and their future television time, Celia and Oliver must travel to Tibet, follow clues, and survive a trip involving yetis, caves, waterfalls, and a very large yak.

The adventures keep getting stranger. We Dine With Cannibals sends the twins through ancient ruins and the Amazon. In We Give a Squid a Wedgie, a new emergency pulls them into the Pacific, where pirates, sea creatures, and a missing parent make a quiet school year impossible. We Sled With Dragons takes them north, toward the North Pole and a search for the long-lost Library of Alexandria.

The humor comes from the twins' complete lack of enthusiasm. They do not dream of becoming heroes. They complain, panic, argue, and wish they were watching reality television. But when someone they love needs help, they also keep going.

That is the trick of the series.

The books mix outlandish travel, myths and monsters, puzzles, family chaos, and jokes about the gap between how adventurous adults see themselves and how adventurous their children feel. Celia and Oliver are observant, resourceful, and often smarter than the grown-ups around them, even when they would never describe themselves that way.

Start with We Are Not Eaten by Yaks. It introduces the Navel family, Sir Edmund, and the funny central problem that drives the whole series: sometimes the people least interested in an adventure are exactly the ones stuck having it.