The Best Treasure Hunt Books for Kids

A birthday present arrives as a string of symbols, sending one child — and every child listening — through a tunnel toward a surprise.

A class bakes gingerbread people, the tray comes back empty, and a trail of rhyming clues appears where the cookies ought to be.

Pirate maps, caves, clocks, shells, and hundreds of ordinary objects become elaborate worlds built to be searched.

Rain cancels the picnic, so Grandma hides a chest of chocolate coins behind a chain of nursery-rhyme clues.

A museum closes for the night, the headlamps come on, and a birthday scavenger hunt winds past dinosaurs, whales, and butterflies.

A magic treehouse lands on a deserted island just as a pirate crew spots the map in two children’s hands.

A book hidden in a San Francisco train station contains a cipher — and the men who attacked its owner want to solve it first.

Two orphans trade a million-dollar inheritance for the first of thirty-nine clues and find themselves racing their own relatives around the world.

Fourteen messages hidden through one long winter lead the two youngest Melendy children toward a reward no one will explain.

Three escape-room experts break into an abandoned funhouse where every locked room seems to have been designed specifically for them.

Four siblings raised on a salvage ship follow cryptic clues through pirates, shipwrecks, and the disappearance of their parents.

Sixteen unlikely heirs move into the same apartment building, pair off, and receive clues to a dead millionaire’s fortune — and possible murder.