Shawty's First Chapter Book

On the very first day of the first grade, I could not have been any more ecstatic to discover I was in the highest level reading group. The Black Group. Each week students were required to pick a book out of a selection based on their color of reading level. Being excited about my high level designation, I grabbed the only chapter book in the array of brightly colored novels. It was from the Magic Treehouse Series. That night, I blew through all seventy-five pages of "Dinosaurs Before Dark". The history fascinated me as well as the simplicity of the writing. The next week, I again chose another from the series, I was hooked.

Mary Pope Osbourne, the author of the Magic Treehouse series, was the first person in my young life who had ever gotten through to me and explained the tales of history in a way that I could understand them.  It is my firm belief now that without these books, I wouldn't have become the history buff that I am today.  The book "Tonight on the Titanic" gave me my very first obsession with a historial event. After I read that book, a couple of buddies and I went to the library and read all about the Titanic.  We even used to pretend that the playground was the bridge of the Titanic and we were the captains trying to avoid the massive icebergs of the Northern Atlantic.

The reason these books connected to me so well was the way they were organized.  Each story began with siblings, Jack and Annie playing at their home. Then they would race over to the treehouse where, once they opened a book, the aerial fort would begin to spin and take them back in time. The first chapter of every book ended the same way. With my favorite words, "Then everything stood still, absolutely still." Those words signified that Jack and Annie had arrived back in time.  Also, the word "absolutely" was the first "big word" I ever learned.  The tale would continue with Jack and Annie living the actual event in history. Which ranged from Gettysburg to the moon landing to the volcanic eruption at Pompei.  Vivid descriptions and the perfect balance of pictures and text created the ultimate reading experience.

Everything about these books just clicked with me. I really loved the way Osbourne would use alliterations in her titles. Each book had an unique and catchy title that combined an alliteration and a time of the day. "Midnight on the Moon", "Sunset of the Sabertooth"and "Pirates Past Noon" just to name a few.

As I write this essay it blows me away to think how much these books actually affected my life.  Today, I have a passion for history and I'm enrolled in AP U.S History. History excites me and I feel I owe thanks to Mary Pope Osbourne for writing these great books that got me so thrilled about stories from long ago. I realized this summer, while on a family trip to Washington D.C. how much I actually like history. Whether it was walking through the Capitol building or The Smithsonian Institute of Aviation History, I felt like Jack and Annie, living the past, thanks to their magic treehouse.