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Home Depot is known for offering a wide range of products for all of your home improvement needs, but did you know they also have an impressive selection of Halloween decorations? One of the most popular items in their collection is the Home Depot Halloween Witch. The Home Depot Halloween Witch is a life-sized animatronic decoration that is sure to add a spooky touch to your Halloween decor. Standing at over six feet tall, this witch is a real showstopper. With realistic details and movement, she will become the centerpiece of your Halloween decorations. The Home Depot Halloween Witch features a motion-activated sensor that activates her when someone passes by. She will come to life with cackling laughter, animated movements, and glowing eyes.

The #1 bestselling Magic Tree House series is ready to whisk you away through time with Jack and Annie–this time to the snowy mountains of Nepal!

But the fear factor is calibrated for 6- and 7-year-olds, especially once they ve read a couple of the books and know that no one is ever seriously hurt. I may continue reading this series, if only because I hope that they will get better over time as the books are published more recently and into more modern sentiments and because they are easy reads while I battle insomnia and because there are so many that if I continue to read them I will be spared having to choose another series for a long while.

The twelfth book in the Magic Treehouse fantasy series

She will come to life with cackling laughter, animated movements, and glowing eyes. Whether you place her on your porch, in your yard, or inside your home, she is sure to delight and scare trick-or-treaters and party guests alike. In addition to her impressive size and animatronic features, the Home Depot Halloween Witch is also made with high-quality materials to withstand outdoor conditions.

Book Reviews: An Unpopular Opinion about the Popular Magic Tree House Series

I am continuing my dive into popular and frequently requested series to better recommend them and better hold conversations with customers about them.

I never read The Magic Tree House as a younger person. My sister did. She read all of them that she could do. My friends, aged 30-26, have been excited when I’ve told them I’ve been reading this series.

But it’s unpopular opinion time! I have now read 12 of these novels, and I’ve decided that I just don’t like Jack—and I’m not sure that I like this series either.

My dislike for Jack is admittedly wrapped up in the appearance of people of color in these novels. It came to a head in the twelfth of these books when Jack, after disparaging the beliefs of an Inuit “seal hunter” (this man is only ever referred to as a seal hunter and never identified as Inuit), takes sacred masks from his home without permission. He later claims to have done so “accidentally,” but it seems a very willful act to “carefully put” the masks into his backpack. Later without being instructed in the way to respectfully do so, Jack and Annie (at Annie’s prompting) make up a prayer and dance to the Polar Bear Spirit whom they see in a mother polar bear who helps them escape from thin ice.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve disapproved of Jack’s interaction with or Osborne’s depiction particularly of the characters of color in this series. I was off-put too especially by the depiction of the silent, “noble,” “graceful” Masai warrior with whom the two share peanut butter and honey sandwiches when they land in the African savannah in the eleventh book. The people that the pair meet in the ghost town in the “Wild West” were a missed opportunity for inclusion, the Wild West being a Blacker, browner, and more queer place than it is imagined in American mythology (also if a horse still looks like a foal, please don’t try to sit on it, let alone ride it). The pair borrow from a Cro-Magnon family that they fear. The Japanese ninjas are depicted as historical rather than mythological as they were in Dragonbreath, even while far more drawing on the mythology of ninjas than on history. The Egyptians that they meet are a queen’s ghost and grave robbers. How all of these people speak English when Osborne wants them to do—and why the Masai man does not—is never explained.

Further, the pair frequently borrow, often without asking, essential items from the times and the places that they land: warm clothing, boots, a boat. Rarely are there consequences for their theft—

—”borrowed—borrowed without permission but with every intention” of leaving it someplace different in the same time and general area in which they land. They know enough at least not to take most items back to their own time and place of contemporary Pennsylvania.

But as a science-fiction reader and viewer, the lack of consequences for their time travel is a touch frustrating. My mind shouts about the time-space continuum as they interfere with the timeline without consideration or seeming consequence to themselves or to the future.

There is science and there is history wrapped up in these stories. I see the appeal. I admit that I learn a little, and I’ve been surprised by some of the detail included in this series for young readers (I had graduated college, I believe, before learning about the Cro-Magnon people), but more often than not they seem to rely on mythology and an impression of a place and time, a child’s view of a place and time born of other stories more than on history. There’s far more of fantasy adventure here than of fact. *I have not read more than a preview attached in several of the books of the corresponding Fact Trackers, which may clear up some of the mysticism and naïve impressions that pervade the novels.

Annie is possessed of a sort of magical innocence. She can talk to animals. She has an innate sense of which beings are there to help them on the journeys. She frequently feels surety where Jack feels fear. She is impulsive, but usually the impulsivity is rewarded because her instincts are driven by this innate understanding of a creature’s nature. Her instincts are to care and be cared for in return.

Annie bothers me less than does Jack. Annie at least seems to show more respect for the creatures and people that they meet in their travels. But still without Jack to ground her, I think I would find her naivety too saccharine.

The titular tree house belongs to Morgan le Fey, who in these tales appears as a magical librarian and is thwarted by Merlin. This reversal of the Arthurian tales intrigues me. It was at first jarring, but it makes me question why Morgan is reviled in Arthurian tales while Merlin is revered. I have not read enough of the source material (being more generally familiar from modern retellings and appearances) to know the answer to this. Perhaps Morgan was hated for good reason. Perhaps she was hated because she was a woman with power who did not yield to a male king.

The series seems to come in groups of four. The first four books are Jack and Annie discovering how to use the Magic Tree House and exploring places and time periods aimlessly. In books 5-8, Jack and Annie seek to rescue Morgan. In 9-12, the pair solve riddles in a challenge set by Morgan. Osborne does a good job of recapping previous books in these sets in successive books, so I stand by my assumption that it is possible to skip around in the series. Nevertheless there is more of order and a building, overarching plot to these books than I expected before reading them. Pay attention perhaps to each set of four.

I may continue reading this series, if only because I hope that they will get better over time as the books are published more recently and into more modern sentiments and because they are easy reads while I battle insomnia and because there are so many that if I continue to read them I will be spared having to choose another series for a long while. If my opinion changes with further books, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Have you read this series? Have you read it as a child or as an adult? I would love to hear others’ opinions on this series.

My favorite has been I think Book 9: Dolphins at Daybreak (where there are consequences, but they hurt no one with their actions) and after that probably Book 1: Dinosaurs Before Dark (dinosaurs, baby dinosaurs, naivety, accidental usage of the tree house’s magic). Do you have a favorite?

Osborne, Mary Pope. The Magic Tree House, Books 1-12. Illus. Sal Murdocca. Random, 2010 (Kindle editions). Originally published 1992-1998.

Intended audience: Ages 6-9.

Visit the series’ page for links to order, summaries, sample pages, and games.

This review is not endorsed by Mary Pope Osborne, Sal Murdocca, or Random House. It is an independent, honest review by a reader.

A Sidebar about Dragon Bite Books: If you’ve been with me a while, you’ll notice that this week Dragon Bite Books underwent a MAJOR remodel. There are things that I love about this new theme, and there are things that I miss from the old. If you’ve been with me for a while, I would love your input and comments on the new look. Do you prefer this or the old? Are there features of the old that you’d like to see on the new?

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Book Reviews: An Unpopular Opinion about the Popular Magic Tree House Series

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