Building the Magic Tree House
By Mary Pope Osborne

Authors often arrive at the simplest ideas after traveling the most complicated routes. My pathway to the Magic Tree House series was a maze of twists and turns. It all started with an offer from an editor at Random House: "How would you like to do a series? You can write about anything you want."

I hesitated at first because I worried that a series would mean writing the same thing over and over. The books I'd already published reflected my eclectic interests—from young adult novels about contemporary teenage life to retellings of Greek and Norse myths to biographies of American heroes to mystery novels with a cast of bug characters.

Research helps author Mary Pope Osborne support and enhance her current writing projects, and also helps her to generate ideas for new books.

I feared that a series would be too confining. How could I make each book different enough to retain my enthusiasm? Eventually, I came up with an answer: I would write a series with characters who travel to a different time and place in every book.

In my first attempt to develop this concept, my characters found a pair of magic whistles in their cellar. When they blew on the whistles, they traveled to a faraway place.

I wrote a whole book based on this idea—and it didn't work.

On my next try, I sent my characters into a creaky old museum. They met an elderly museum director who gave them an ancient bowl, and miraculously they journeyed back to the time of the bowl.

I wrote a whole book based on this idea—and it didn't work.

Next, I took my characters deep into the woods where they discovered a remote artist's studio. To their amazement, they found that they could step right into the time and place of the paintings in the studio.

I wrote a book about that—and it didn't work.

I kept trying out different ideas until I'd written seven books that didn't work. With each failed concept, I moved closer to giving up on the series idea entirely. Still, I persisted. I always tell young writers to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. A big part of my own process of writing is trying a lot of ideas and having the courage to throw many of them out—and keep going.

In this case, persistence paid off. One autumn day, in the midst of struggling to find the right vehicle for this series, I was walking down a country road in Pennsylvania with my husband Will. We came across a kids' tree house in a terrible state of disrepair. It seemed to have been abandoned long ago.

I told Will that I'd always wanted a tree house. He said he'd always wanted one, too. One of us then said, "Hey...what about a magic tree house?" That night two writer friends came over for dinner, and the four of us spent all evening trying to figure out how a tree house could be magic. We decided that the kids (Jack and Annie—I'd chosen a brother and sister because I've always had great relationships with my own two brothers) would find books in the tree house, and if they opened one and made a wish, they'd go to the time and place in the book. Pretty simple: A tree house. A book. A wish. But it had taken over a year and many laughably complicated drafts to come up with such a simple concept.

Once I'd settled on the basic idea for the series, though, each book presented a new set of questions to be answered. Where would Jack and Annie go? What would they do when they got there? How could they have a real adventure and not just a pleasant travel experience? The answers to these question are always determined by three things: my imagination, the guidance I receive from my editor and the tremendous amount of research I do.

It might seem odd that I include research as part of the creative process. The fact is that research not only supports and enhances creative ideas, it actually generates new ones. Research is a great stimulus for the imagination. For instance, I might start with a vague notion to write about gorillas. Research then leads me to study the African cloud forest. I take notes from many sources on the environment of the forest on gorilla behavior. As I study the information I've gathered, my imagination begins to work with the facts. I read about how the male leader of the gorilla family scares off enemies with a display of chest-pounding and terrible sounds. Then, in my story, I write about how such a gorilla frightens Jack and Annie and how Jack later uses the same technique to scare away a panther.

As I wrote more and more Magic Tree House books, I became more and more eager to share with young readers the process that was bringing me such pleasure. At the same time, my husband Will wanted to give kids more factual information about the times and places that Jack and Annie were visiting. These ambitions led us to create the Magic Tree House Research Guides together. The Research Guides are companions to the fiction books. Once a child's curiosity has been piqued by a Jack and Annie adventure, the Guides give the young reader the opportunity to go a step further—and discover the facts behind the fiction. In addition, they encourage kids to explore other research resources, such as libraries, museums and the Internet.

We have now completed eight Magic Tree House Research Guides and more are on the way. When Will and I did a presentation recently at the Texas Book Festival, teachers told us that the Research Guides were an answer to a prayer—as they help teachers teach the concept of "paired selections." They said that, used together, the fiction and nonfiction books can help kids learn how to evaluate and apply information and empower them to seek their own answers to questions that naturally arise as they read new material.

I want Magic Tree House fiction and nonfiction books to be a first step on a lifelong journey of exploration. I hope that they will not only get kids reading, but also stimulate their imaginations and get them excited about learning. I sometimes find evidence that this goal might be attainable. To quote a favorite line form one of the thousands of kids' letters I've received: "I love your books because they almost made me smart."

With this feature appearing every May, a well-known author will tell us, in his or her own words, what inspired one of their best works.

May 2003, Vol.33, No.8