Originally, I was just going to do four Magic Tree House books; and I wanted to get back to my other writing which I really enjoyed. I was writing a mystery series with bugs. I was working on a lot of retellings of folklore and fairytales. I was also working on a book on the religions of the world — which meant a lot to me based on my background of studying religion and traveling all over the east.
So four Magic Tree House books, mass market paperback books — perhaps they’d make enough that I could support some of these other habits because they were going to go out in a much bigger way than the more, trade books, books that would end up more in libraries and small bookstores.
That was my intention in 1991, I think. The four books came out and suddenly something happened to me that had never happened before — I started getting letters from teachers and from kids and parents. I’d never gotten letters like these before. Where I thought these were my simplest work and not my most artistic work — these letters were phenomenal in terms of how a kid learned to read in the books or how a kid wanted more of the books.
The child would send me their own Magic Tree House story. All these interesting things start coming in. When Random House said: would I do four more — I thought, well, just four more wouldn’t hurt anybody, so I’m just going to jump in and do four more. When those eight were done, by the time they were done, I was traveling all over the country visiting schools.
I just fell into this groove of wanting to be with kids and talk to them about the series, I was getting their ideas about where Jack and Annie should go. I would arrive at a school and they’d have all these projects for Magic Tree House. They would have bulletin boards and stories and do little plays. None of this had ever happened before.
Suddenly I just was caught up in the energy of that; and then Random House asked for four more books. We got up to 12 books and about that time I said: there’s a future here. This is so intoxicating to be part of the educational process. Teachers were playing a big role and inspiring me and in talking to each other and getting the books around.
At that point, we said: what would be the most educational way to continue this series? We thought: well, what’s happening is I’m taking a different subject with each book, teachers and kids want to know more about each subject. What if we start a non-fiction line? I think there was a name for this in education called “Parents Selection.”
You take fiction and non-fiction and get kids to understand the relationship. We had a perfect set-up. My husband, Will, took on that job because I was pretty busy with the fiction. He’s an excellent writer and a great researcher; and he started the Magic Tree House Research Guides. We did one on knights and castles and mummies and pyramids and the rain forest.
They started coming out as companions to my first books. Then we leapt over some subjects to do curriculum
more curriculum-connected subjects; teachers start playing even a bigger role. We got teacher advisors, teachers started writing to us, we were writing back asking their advice — we got several teachers as official advisors.
At that point, this became a serious educational tool. After Will had done, I think, eight, he was going to ask to do a Magic Tree House Planetarium Show at Chapel Hill. He left to do that show and then two more subsequently; that’s when we pulled my sister onboard to take over the non-fiction line.
The Magic Tree House Research Guides now are a big part of the whole program — there are about 17 of them out there — and Natalie and I tour with her books and my books. This way a child who’s more of a non-fiction reader gets to come in from that angle, a child who’s fiction
you know, gets over to non-fiction through the fiction.
Hopefully then, all children use this as a launching pad to go and read more about a subject of interest beyond our books. That’s what we encourage in the non-fiction is: you can do your own research and you can go on the internet, you can go to the library, you can go to a museum — whatever. We want children to be curious and find that gaining knowledge is fun.
We try to keep it fun by, you know, encouraging their curiosity and their interests. I think it’s just fun for us — more fun now than it ever was, and I’m working on my 41st book. Somehow that whole thing of changing your subjects and opening yourself to the world is a real motivator for the writers as well as hopefully the readers.
