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Do you think Magic Treehouse books are twaddle?
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So what do you think? I’ve pretty much just written them off as twaddle, but honestly I’ve never picked one up and read it. I guess I always figured there were plenty of books available that I felt good about in terms of language, plot, etc., that it wasn’t worth even investigating. My older ones loved reading on their own all the Thornton Burgess books (the little chapter books of Old Mother West Wind and all the indiv chapter books on the different characters) and loads of other stuff. But with my new young crew, I’m struggling a bit more. I think I haven’t nourished them as well in terms of beautiful literature amidst the busy-ness of daily life with a bigger age spread and more children. <sigh>
I like the idea of them learning history through the Magic Treehouse books… but would they learn much from TMT books? Is it twaddlish in how it’s written? I would love to hear your thoughts.
This would be for a 5yo and almost-7yo to read independently; not me reading aloud to them. Thank you! 🙂
I recall reading through the first book, Dinosaurs Before Dark, and I decided not to read the series based on what I read there. The series includes a character called the Enchantress Librarian, and later books (called the Merlin Mission books) do mention magic. We choose to avoid such material for spiritual reasons, so my kids haven’t read them.
Additionally, the first book refers to dinosaurs being on the Earth 65 million years ago, so if you hold a “young Earth” view of creation, this might not be acceptable to you. Often times, I just comment that the author holds a different viewpoint than what we believe, or I can just edit as I read (if it’s a read-aloud book).
My younger children have enjoyed these books as a stepping stone into history for them. For example when we were studying the Civil War as a family it was much more approachable for them to have a Magic Tree House book than many of the other Civil War books that are more detailed. We’ve enjoyed titles that introduce them to William Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, pioneers, the erruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and more. However, we do not mind mentions of magic via a treehouse, where the children can open a book and say, in essence, “I want to go there” and they are able to travel to that place and time. The books have also been a good starting place for my oldest (now age 9) to do some reading aloud to her siblings that is something more than a picture book, but easier than books she is reading herself.
Each family is different in what they read, so I suggest grabbing a few on specific topics that might relate to your studies and pre-read them yourself.
Tristan is right about reading some of them yourself. You can likely get a couple of them from your library and read through them in a very short while. You may find some of them are perfect to either introduce or add to the books you’ve scheduled for history.
My 11yo son has struggled with finding books to read on his own at bedtime since he is very delayed in reading, and he appreciates having easy biography readers or simple history readers that go along with what we’ve been studying. They are so much more interesting to him than “Amanda the Pig” and other simple beginning reader books. He actually began to be insulted by the twaddley early readers that were available to him.
I never really considered these “history” but relatively harmless “practice-reading” fodder for kids who are too old for easy readers and not ready for “real” chapter literature yet. My two youngest sons both read some of them, until they got past the practice-reading phase and could more easily read longer, better books, and then they just naturally moved on. There is a later part of them, mostly longer than the first ones and often hardcover, that I did not like as well, but the first bunch were pretty harmless, and if not great literature, at least free of some of the most egregious inanity in a lot of books for that age.
I tried them when my DD was 5, she was an excellent reader for her age and I was trying to transition her to chapter books. So many moms said their children loved MTH, so I thought I’d give them a whirl, and my DD hated them. They are very formulaic books, after the 3rd book my DD was done with them. I think its one of those things, YMMV. I was not impressed with the books, but for me it was just going to serve a short purpose, so I was willing to try, we had good literature going on in other areas of our home, but MTH didn’t work for us. I just went back to what I was doing, I continued to give my DD beautifully illustrated picture/story books (that were written at a higher level) than MTH. Visually that worked better for her, and then later I tried again, in a different way, to transition her to chapter books, and it worked.
So I would say it really depends on your child, your purpose in why you would like to use those books, etc.
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