BARNES & NOBLE | Magic Tree House Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4 (Magic Tree House Series) by Mary Pope Osborne

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Overview

Get ready for a world of adventure with the first four books of the New York Times bestselling Magic Tree House series boxed together for the first time!

These four titles are the perfect gift for a Magic Tree House fan or any child who loves a good adventure. Parents, teachers, and librarians hail the chapter-book series as a tool to promote reading, as even the most reluctant readers want to know where the Magic Tree House will take the brother-and-sister team next.

When Jack and Annie discover a mysterious tree house filled with books, they never dream that it will take them on exciting adventures full of history, mystery, and magic! The story begins with Dinosaurs Before Dark, when Jack and Annie are whisked back to the prehistoric past. Can they figure out how to get home before dark . . . or will they become a dinosaur's dinner? In The Knight at Dawn, Jack and Annie aren't exactly welcome guests to the grand feast. Will the castle's secret passage lead them to safety or more trouble? When the tree house takes them back to ancient Egypt in Mummies in the Morning, Jack and Annie must help a long-dead queen solve a puzzle. And in Pirates Past Noon, Jack and Annie find a secret map that leads to buried treasure and ruthless pirates!

Mary Pope Osborne brings together just the right combination of history, magic, and fast-paced adventure to satisfy kids, parents, teachers, and librarians all over the world with her New York Times bestselling series.

Books in this set include: Dinosaurs Before Dark (#1), The Knight at Dawn (#2), Mummies in the Morning (#3), and Pirates Past Noon (#4).

Don’t miss all the fun things you can do and discover at MagicTreeHouse.com!

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Introduce your child to the magic of reading! This fabulous box set features the first four books in the renowned Magic Tree House chapter book series. These fantastic books revolve around eight-year-old Jack and his sister Annie, who stumble upon a magic tree house filled with books that transports them back in time to the places described in the books.

In Book 1, Dinosaurs Before Dark, the mysterious tree house whisks Jack and Annie back to the prehistoric past. Can they figure out how to get home before dark...or will they become a dinosaur's dinner? In Book 2, The Knight at Dawn, the Magic Tree House sends the siblings back to the Middle Ages for another wild adventure -- this time, in a storybook castle. In Mummies in the Morning (Book 3), Jack and Annie find themselves in ancient Egypt. There, they meet a long-dead queen who needs their help. Will Jack and Annie be able to solve the puzzle, or will they end up as mummies themselves? And in Book 4, Pirates Past Noon, the Magic Tree House transports Jack and Annie back to the days of deserted islands and nasty pirates. Will they discover buried treasure? Or will they walk the plank? Filled with fun and fast-paced adventure, the books are all great reads...and they're educational!

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780375813658
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Publication date: 5/29/2001
Series: Magic Tree House Series
Edition description: Books 1 - 4
Pages: 125
Sales rank: 589
Age range: 6 - 8 Years
Product dimensions: 5.40 (w) x 7.80 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

MARY POPE OSBORNE is the author of the New York Times number one bestselling Magic Tree House series. She and her husband, writer Will Osborne (author of Magic Tree House: The Musical), live in northwestern Connecticut with their three dogs. Ms. Osborne is also the coauthor of the companion Magic Tree House Fact Trackers series with Will, and with her sister, Natalie Pope Boyce.

SAL MURDOCCA has illustrated more than 200 children's trade and text books. He is also a librettist for children's opera, a video artist, an avid runner, hiker, and bicyclist, and a teacher of children's illustration at the Parsons School of Design. Sal lives and works in New York with his wife, Nancy.

Biography

Ever since 1992, Mary Pope Osborne has been thrilling kids everywhere with her delightfully exciting Magic Tree House series. The globetrotting escapades of time travelers Jack and Annie are brimming with adventure and magic (not to mention some subtly placed lessons on history and geography). With a life like Osborne's, it's only natural that she would be capable of bringing such wondrous stories to life.

Osborne was brought up in a military family, and her parents' work led to a lifestyle marked by constant change. "By the time I was 15," she says on randomhouse.com, "I had lived in Oklahoma, Austria, Florida, and four different army posts in Virginia and North Carolina." While many kids would probably feel disoriented by such constant change, Osborne wouldn't have had it any other way. "Moving was never traumatic for me, but staying in one place was. When my dad finally retired to a small town in North Carolina, I nearly went crazy with boredom. I craved the adventure and changing scenery of our military life."

And adventure is exactly what Osborne got! After college, she embarked on a series of daring treks across the globe that would surely give Jack and Annie a run for their money. "For a while I camped in a cave on the island of Crete," she said. "Then I joined up with a small band of European young people heading to 'The East.' We traveled through 11 Asian countries and nearly lost our lives, first in an earthquake in northern Afghanistan and then in a riot in Kabul."

Following an illness she contracted in Katmandu, Osborne returned home to the U.S. trying her hand at a vast variety of jobs: window dresser, medical assistant, Russian travel consultant, waitress, bartender, and an assistant editor at a children's magazine. Although Osborne had unconsciously moved closer toward her ultimate career, she says that her first attempts at writing seemed to come without warning. "One day, out of the blue, I began writing a story about an 11-year-old girl in the South," she recalls. "The girl was a lot like me, and many of the incidents in the story were similar to happenings in my childhood...it became a young adult novel called Run, Run Fast as You Can. Finally, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up."

She sure did! Since then, Osborne has penned a slew of stories, including picture books, chapter books, middle-grade biographies, and young adult novels; but she is indisputably best known for her wonderful Magic Tree House books, a happy hodge-podge of history and mystery with a time travel theme kids find irresistible. No doubt inspired by Osborne's own highly adventurous life, these exiting expeditions have attracted droves of children and pleased educators by combining compulsively readable storytelling with useful facts about geography and history.

As was written of the series in Children's Literature, "Mary Pope Osborne provides nicely paced excitement for young readers, and there's just enough information mixed in so that children will take away some historical fact along with a sense of accomplishment at having completed a chapter book." As much as Osborne has certainly pleased her readers (not to mention their parents and teachers), perhaps no one is quite as pleased as she. "I'm one of those very lucky people who absolutely loves what they do for a living," she explained. "There is no career better suited to my eccentricities, strengths, and passions than that of a children's book author."

Good To Know

A few fascinating outtakes from our interview with Osborne:

"One of the most defining experiences of my life was traveling overland in an old van through the Middle East and Asia in the early 1970's. One day, when a small group of us were camped in a remote part of northern Afghanistan, we saw a woman riding horseback over the sloping plain. Her long brown hair floated on the wind and she wore a bright gypsy-style dress. When she got closer, I realized she was one of my roommates from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill! Though I didn't even know she'd left the U.S.—and she didn't know I was in Afghanistan, we weren't that surprised to come upon each other. That says a lot about the times we were living in then."

"After 26 years of living in New York City, my husband Will and I now spend most of our time in Northwestern Connecticut, living in a house that overlooks a lake. We kayak and hike with our two Norfolk terriers, Joey and Mr. Bezo. Will's learning Italian, and I've been working with a tutor for two years trying to understand Dante's Divine Comedy. One of my biggest hobbies is reading philosophy and theology. We spend lots of time, of course, on our work. After writing three shows for the Morehead Planetarium in North Carolina, Will's writing a musical based on the Magic Tree House series. I'm writing book # 38 in the series. I also spend a lot of time with my sister Natalie Pope Boyce who works on the Magic Tree House Research Guides. Natalie and our nephews and some of our best friends live nearby in the Berkshires Hills of Massachusetts, so we're up there a lot, too. My only complaint is there is not enough time to do all I want to do. For instance, I'd love to take drawing classes and I'd love to paint the lake we're living on. And I'd love to bird watch and become a better cook and learn about classical music. Maybe sometime in the future...."

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Magic Tree House Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4 (Magic Tree House Series)

Overview

Pick Up in Store

Available on NOOK devices and apps Nook Devices NOOK HD/HD+ Tablet NOOK NOOK Color NOOK Tablet Tablet/Phone NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet NOOK for iOS NOOK for Android NOOK Kids for iPad PC/Mac NOOK for Windows 8 NOOK for PC NOOK for Mac NOOK Study NOOK for Web

All Available Formats & Editions

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Related Subjects

Magic Tree House Series

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Product Details

Meet the Author

Biography

Good To Know

Customer Reviews

5 Star

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1 Star

The Magic Tree House Series by Oscar

A Great Set !

Good read

mom whos son hated to read until now

My son loved these books!

As a child, these books were the books that helped me become such a fantastic reader:]

I really enjoyed this book...

Madison

Find the word

Lili

Good books

Alyssa

Welllll

J

Peanut Kid

Love

This is awesome

I kinda like to read this to kids

I don't get it.

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