![]() ![]() This little boy said he was 7 years old and he was writing his own book, and it was scary. ![]() “The first kid the first time I knew I was on something extraordinary was when I got a letter in the first year after the first book. She said the volume of fan mail from readers is so great she had to hire someone to help her sort through it. Because you were right: The world is filled with wonder and magic and you have a big role to play in it,” she said. “I tell audiences of adults, just go back to being who you were at 7 and 8. They see it as full of possibility,” she said. She is teeming with anecdotes about her encounters with young readers, like the young boy who took her over to say, shyly, that she “might not know this,” but he was an author too. Her books are geared at kids aged seven to 12, which she says is “the age where I think (kids are) most themselves, before peer pressure and culture steps in to distort their thinking. Reflecting, Osborne has a theory about why her books have such a lasting impact on readers, whether middle schoolers or adults. Random House Fan mail and the ‘gift’ of writing for young readers "when (adult readers) come up to me, I realize if they’re weeping or if they’re overwhelmed, it’s for that self that they were that they’re getting back in touch with,” Osborne said. And you can put books up there." Young "Magic Tree House" readers. By nightfall, I had it, and then I had the book," she said.Īs for what makes tree houses so, well, magical? Osborne took a guess. Both of us wished we'd had when we were young. "We're walking in the woods and saw an old tree house. The breakthrough came when she and her husband were on vacation in Pennsylvania and encountered a tree house. In the seven failed manuscripts, Jack and Annie used devices like a magic cellar, a magic artist's studio, a magic museum and magic whistles to travel back in time. It took a year of bad ideas to get to the good one," she said. "I came up with an idea of time travel, but I didn't know how I would get a brother and sister back in time. Osborne published children's books about history and mythology before she was approached by Random House about starting a series. It just sort of rushed through me," she said. "I'd go up to the roof of the Bleecker Street apartment and I started writing children's stories. Between waitressing jobs, Osborne began writing for kids. She and her husband moved to New York, where he tried to find acting work. She fell ill in Nepal and practically had to be airlifted home, putting an end to her bohemian journey - and starting her next adventure. In her early 20s, Osborne traveled through Europe and Asia, stopping in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Starting with that latchkey childhood, freedom and curiosity are threads through her biography, leading up to the creation of "Tree House." "We didn't mind the moving because we always had each other, and the new environments stimulated different kinds of play." She grew up in a military family, moving about every two years. A table would become a ship," Osborne said. While writing, Osborne is able to call upon the feeling - which she calls the freedom of childhood - that ran through her when she and her brothers played. I have no sense of my own age, because I don't have my own children." "I look in the mirror and I'm changing - but inside I'm not changing. "I've been a 9-year-old boy now for 30 years," she said, laughing. Part of what has kept her writing, Osborne said, is that her younger self is never far away. Courtesy Mary Pope Osborne The path to 'Tree House' Osborne recently compiled her wisdom of 30 years of writing the “Magic Tree House” series in a book called “ Memories and Life Lessons from the Magic Tree House” out earlier this year.īelow, we caught up with Osborne about a lifetime with Jack and Annie.
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