Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Knight at Dawn by Mary Pope Osborne (Magic Tree House Series #2)

Overview
.Jack and Annie are ready for their next fantasy adventure in the bestselling middle-grade series—the Magic Tree House!


A Castle with a secret passage!

That's what Jack and Annie find when the Magic Tree House whisks them back to the Middle Ages for another wild adventure. In the Great Hall of the castle, a feast is under way. But Jack and Annie aren't exactly welcome guests!

Visit the Magic Tree House website!
MagicTreeHouse.com

My thoughts:
I am enjoying going back to the beginning of the series and seeing the characters make connections and discoveries involving the tree house and the owner of the tree house.  I think it was good planning on Osborne's part to make the first books in the series take Jack and Annie to places that children tend to have a high degree of fascination with.  In the first book they visited the time of the dinosaurs this time they go to a medieval castle.  By using a book they go to a place in history and find out about what things were like in person, but at the same time these books are encouraging young readers to use books as doorways to discover what things were like through using their imaginations.  For reluctant readers these books offer a chance to open up new worlds in a fun and non threatening way.

I am revisiting these books with my children because we did not read them all in order the last time we were reading them and we never even finished reading all of them.  I think at this point my children have finished quite a few of the unknown ones on their own, but if they are out of order you miss putting the details together to solve some of the mysteries.  Later on they start having to go on four adventures to achieve some sort of goal, for now they are just getting used to the idea that there is a tree house that can take them places from books that they wish to see.

I liked how Osborne gave a map of the castle grounds, both inside and out and showed what children who were seven and eight might have been doing in the castle at that time.  It brings it to their level.  Plus the information about the suits of armor, especially how the helmet can weigh as much as 40 pounds, really added another layer.

Details
 •Pub. Date: February 1993
•Publisher: Random House Children's Books
•Format: Paperback , 80pp
•Age Range: 6 to 8
•Series: Magic Tree House Series #2
•ISBN-13: 9780679824121

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