Secret Smithsonian Adventures Books in Order

The Secret Smithsonian Adventures books turn a museum field trip into a time-travel emergency. Four schoolmates, Dominique, Eric, Josephine, and Ajay, head to the Smithsonian expecting a normal day and instead find exhibits and even the present itself badly wrong. With help from a mysterious museum ally and a wisecracking A.I. named Smitty, they get pulled into a mission that is bigger than any one museum visit. Their job is to figure out who is tampering with history, then go back and fix it.

The Smithsonian is not just the backdrop. It is the whole engine of the story.

Each book roots its adventure in a different museum and a different historical problem. In The Wrong Wrights, the National Air and Space Museum has been warped into a world dominated by Barris Airships, and the kids have to restore the Wright brothers to their proper place. Claws and Effect shifts to the National Museum of Natural History, where altered history means dinosaurs roaming the modern world. It's Treason, by George! moves the action to the National Museum of American History and a version of the United States that has somehow become a monarchy.

That structure gives the series a nice rhythm. The kids see the damage in the present, jump into the past, meet real historical figures, and race to stop villains before the changes lock into place. Along the way they cross paths with names like the Wright brothers, Nellie Bly, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Jefferson, Gilbert Stuart, and John Trumbull. The facts matter, but the books keep them moving inside a brisk adventure plot.

The recurring threat comes from people who want to use history for profit or power, especially the Barris brothers and their schemes. That keeps the series from feeling like disconnected museum visits. The kids are learning, yes, but they are also tracking a continuing pattern of meddling, greed, and bad decisions that can rewrite whole pieces of the world if nobody stops it.

Because these are graphic novels, the pacing is fast and the ideas stay visual. Airships, dinosaurs, shifting exhibits, and alternate-history surprises all land well on the page. At the same time, the group dynamic keeps things grounded. No one wins alone here. The series runs on teamwork, curiosity, and the simple thrill of realizing that history is not dusty at all when someone is trying to break it in real time.