The Magic Tree House
In September I started reading The Magic Tree House Series to the girls (the series is written by Mary Pope Osborne). At first I wasn’t sure how it would work out. It is shelved in book shops for ages 5-8 and, being a chapter book, it has only a few pictures, all of which are black and white. I thought Ashley would be ready for them but wasn’t sure how Caitlin, being just 3 years old, would respond to them. As it turns out the girls love the series and Caitlin even has a slight edge on Ashley in her adoration. She amazes me with her memory for the details of the book, like that the little mouse in books 4-8 is called Peanut or that the Jack and Annie are trying to become “Master Librarians” in books 9-12. And she gets very excited when the enchantress Morgan Le Faye, who owns the Tree House, enters the story.
The books also provide number recognition opportunities for Caitlin as we move from chapter 1 to chapter 10 in each book. Ashley is beginning to pay attention to tables of content and page numbers. And the wealth of information on the theme topic for each book is presented in an extremely digestible and memorable fashion for such little readers/listeners. If that wasn’t enough there is a dedicated website that presents a few multi-choice trivia questions for each book to help children recall some of the knowledge they have acquired from each book.
Best of all, our library has the series, including the unabridged sound recordings on CD. We have just received the CDs for the first 12 books that we’ve read so far. With 38 books already published in the series, and the likelihood of many more to come, this looks like a series that will entertain (and educate) us for quite some time into the future.
Images Credits: from Random House, Inc. at