Shirley J. Juvenile Fiction Morgan LaFey's magical treehouse that transports Jack and Annie on adventures in Morgan's magical books
The Magic Treehouse by Mary Pope Osborne (I read 8 books total Books 1-8 in the series)
Total: 784 pages
Book 1: Dinosaurs Before Dark 80 pages
Book 2: Knight at Dawn 176 pages
Book 3: Mummies in the Morning 80 pages
Book 4: Pirates Past Noon 128 pages
Book 5: Night of the Ninjas 80 pages
Book 6: Afternoon on the Amazon 80 pages
Book 7: Sunset of the Sabertooth 80 pages
Book 8: Midnight on the Moon 80 pages
Total: 784 pages
The Magic Treehouse books are actually a series of 55+ books divided into 2 categories. The first 28 books are about Morgan LaFey and I understand 29-55+ are about her brother Merlin the famed Magician of King Arthur's court. I have only finished the first 8 books, but, I think I am good and don't feel the need to continue the series. The premise of the stories is 8 year old Jack and his 7 year old sister Annie while out playing in the woods by their house come upon a treehouse they had never noticed before. Like Goldilocks did with the three bears house before them they decide to climb up and check it out. It is really a beautiful wonderous place inside and it is filled with loads of books about all manner of topics. Turns out it is an enchanted treehouse (probably why they never noticed it before) and is owned by Morgan LaFey, who in previous literature was quite a rough gal who, as Disney showed us in the Sword in the Stone, had an ongoing rivalry with her brother and always wanted to best him. In this story we meet a milder, kinder Morgan who is a magical librarian hence why she has all the books and because the books are magical if you point to a picture in one and wish you were there so you are! The 8 books I read has Jack and Annie visiting with dinosaurs, knights in castles, mummies in ancient Egypt and the ghost of a queen they help to find her copy of the Book of the Dead so she can get to the other side, though no mention of the River Styx nor the ferryman comes up, they are captured by pirates thinking they are getting a day at the beach with that wish, they meet ninjas, visit a rainforest and find the beauty and the horror there, they head back in time to cavemen days and in the 8th book go to the future and visit the moon. The stories are cute. Jack is the long suffering voice of reason while Annie ignores him and goes running off getting lost, in trouble etc. because she won't look before she leaps but, being an animal whisperer she tends to land on her feet no matter how much mud they have to get through. The stories are cute, the idea a play on the author's own youth with her brothers going adventuring in all the different parts of the world her military father took the family to. I guess I would recommend this as a read-aloud book for parents with young children, but, I found Annie to be so obnoxious I have read all about her that I plan to.
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