In all of the Magic Tree House books, Mary Pope Osborne sends you on an adventure in search of certain materials, some of historical meanings. You journey off to different places with a cautious eight year old boy named Jack and his spunky seven year old sister, Annie.
Jack and Annie came across a mysterious tree house in the woods near their Pennsylvania home one day. The tree house is filled with books of all kinds. They soon realize this is a magic tree house that would take them on a journey to any place in one of these books. If they pointed to a picture in one of the books and wished to go there, the tree house would take them there.
I have never been to Ireland or for that matter read much about Ireland’s history, but author Mary Pope Osborn can take you back in time and compose a story so vividly that you yourself become a part of it. And when you have completed the story, you leave with true facts about the subject at hand.
On this particular voyage, Jack and Annie are asked to help their friend Morgan le Fay (a magical librarian from King Arthur’s time) find a story with the words Serpens Magna written on it in ancient Ireland. She goes on to tell them about the Dark Ages in Europe. “Why is it called dark?” said Jack. “[It was] the time after the fall of the Roman Empire.” “It was a difficult time,” said Morgan. “People had to work very hard just to feed and clothe themselves.”
With worry in his eye, Jack and Annie pointed to the cover of Ireland and made their wish. The wind blew hard and the tree house spun franticly then all of a sudden everything stopped. Jack and Annie were on the edge of a cliff in Ireland! Not knowing what to do next Jack looked into the Ireland book. It told of monks and civilization. “If we find civilization, I think we’ll find the lost story,” he said. Jack grabbed his ever trusting notebook and jotted down “brave monks in Ireland”.
Jack and Annie started up the cliff but Annie tripped. Jack thought it was too dangerous to go any further when all of a sudden a rope came falling down. It hung dangling beside them. Of course the ever so spunky Annie talks Jack into climbing up the rope. Who or what lies on the other side of the rope? Is it civilization or a Viking? At the other end of the rope was a monk who helped Jack and Annie to his monastery. Could this be the place where the lost book is?
The monk introduced the two of them to Brother Michael. He was hard at work writing a book about stories that were gathered from storytellers “…who sing of the tales of long ago…” See back then there were no computers in which to type the books. All the books were hand written. This particular book is the one Jack and Annie have been searching for. They were to come back later when Brother Michael had finished.
As Jack and Annie were on their way back to the tree house they noticed that the flock of gulls above circled around in fury. “Jack looked at the horizon one last time. His heart nearly stopped. A ship was outlined against the sky! Behind it he saw two smaller ships.” “Oh, no,” Jack whispered “Vikings!” Jack and Annie went back to warn the monks. The monks told of another way to get to the magic tree house without crossing paths with the Vikings. When they reached the bottom of the cliff, Jack and Annie came across the Viking ships. To stay out of view, Jack and Annie crept into one of the Viking ships. The ship’s rope, that was anchoring it to the shore, had let loose and Jack and Annie drifted out to sea. There they will come face to face with a serpent monster. Will they ever make it back to the magic tree house? Did Brother Michael ever give them the book Morgan le Fay wanted them to find?
This is a wonderful book for second through fourth grade reading levels. Mary Pope Osborne entices her readers with such vivid writing. I believe first grade and late kindergarten age students would be able to focus on such a story being read to them. She incorporates many historical facts within the story. The character, Jack is always researching ideas in the particular book they are exploring at that time. He also records different observations he sees or hears into his notebook. What a good way to incorporate the science process skill - observation. ( )

To begin with I will give an example of why I think Jack's notebook notes are dumb. Here's an example of one of the two notebook notes in this book (the books almost always have two one or two line notebook notes: "brave monks in Ireland." Though this is vaguely related to the story, it would be cruddy research if Jack were ever actually planning on using his notes. For an example of good research notes, read the Magic School bus chapter books, which are on the same reading level, more interesting, better written, and admit to their historical inaccuracies.

That brings me to what really bothered me about this book. Jack and Annie head to an Ireland filled with historical falcities, generalizations, and misconceptions that anyone who's taken a basic history course on the Vikings in Ireland would recognise as completely wrong. ( )