LitPick Review
Magic Treehouse Fact Tracker: Heroes for All Times by Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce is an amazing book of fun facts and research. It goes with the popular High Time for Heroes story that features the characters many kids love, Jack and Annie. After learning about Florence Nightingale in that adventure, they decide to describe her and five other heroes in this book: Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. (including Rosa Parks’ story), and John Muir.
Separate chapters tell each person’s life story and what they did that is still important to us today. The book is loaded with drawings and photos, and important vocabulary words are defined in the margins. It lists resources to use for more information about each person, and an index at the end helps anyone interested in reading a little bit find the right page quickly.
Opinion:
I really enjoy the nonfiction and fiction books from the Magic Treehouse series. The books tend to follow a similar format, and I like knowing what to expect from them. They’re also easy to understand and quick to read. There’s always a lot of information in them that’s presented in fun, interesting ways, so there's usually something new to learn. This book is a great overview when a reader doesn’t know anything about the heroes and a good brush-up for anyone who has read about the people before. I especially like the photos because they bring history to life and help me see what it may have been like to live in some other place or time.
