Dinosaurs Before Dark (Magic Tree House, No. 1) (Book & CD) (Kindle, Box Set)
Mary Pope Osborne (Author), Sal Murdocca (Illustrator)
A Magical Book, a Magical Adventure, Can't Wait to Dive Into the Rest
This is a magical adventure book. Jack and Annie are siblings. Jack is eight-and-a-half, while Annie is seven, and very precocious. Their adventure begins in a tree house they discover near their house. Finding a tree house is cause for excitement. Finding books inside the tree house is even better. Books that make their wishes come true is truly magical! Their adventure begins when the book takes them back, 65 million years in the past to be precise, to a world where dinosaurs roam the world! There they see, and even pet, a plant-eating dinosaur, a pteranadon. They come dangerously close to a meat-eating dinosaur, the terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex. How Jack and Annie escape from the dinosaur, and back to their tree house, and then back to their world of today is the rest of the adventure.
The author's style of writing is simple, conversational, and invites you to dive into the book, into a magical world. There is also a subtle amount of learning that the author cleverly inserts in. I need to read more adventures from the series to better understand how much and how effective this is.
This was the first "Magic Tree House" adventure I read, and this is also the first story in the series. This is a very satisfying read, and I suspect children should be able to finish off this book in an hour or two. There are gray illustrations that are liberally sprinkled throughout the book and help the reader visualize the adventure.
Kindle Excerpt:
© 2012, Abhinav Agarwal. All rights reserved.
