The Magic Treehouse Series is a great chapter book series that, like anything on earth, can come in for some criticism from people.  I want to say at the beginning that I love these books – and this is not about taking potshots. Because if you read the reviews on Amazon, they are really 80% positive.

But I do want to use this as an example about how adults can apply their own literary standards to the genre of kids chapter books and kind of miss the point that these books are for teaching the enjoyment of reading first – and everything else really is secondary.

If you’ve read the books, you’ll see sentence fragments, especially in the early books in the series. I think the author uses implied verbs in sentences which inflame the grammarians/editorially inclined parents of the world.  An example of this (my own and not extracted from the books:

“Johnny said he wants to go to the store. Me, too!”

The verb and the object of the second sentence are borrowed from the first sentence…and in the context of a kids book that mirrors the colloquial way that kids communicate it’s ok.

But the parent as educator’s point of view of course is that it is not ok to use sentence fragments in published materials – especially because kids are so easily confused on this topic to begin with. And you can see their point.

But the point that missed is that the primary mission when kids are learning to read is to get them to enjoy reading. And it’s clear that kids enjoy The Magic Treehouse Series.

Overwhelmingly so! (just joking, my grammarian friends)

Other objections to the Magic Treehouse Series include:

“Poorly-developed plotlines with not enough “meat” for the age level of children they are meant to target.”

“Over time, it gets a bit formulaic and thin.”

Again, I would say to balance these out against the majority of comments that reflect how kids love this series and can’t get enough of it. And I bring it up to illustrate the point that as an adult, you should strive to hold your adult sensibilities in check a bit, and just judge the books your kids read by the smiles on their faces, and the enthusiasm with which they ask to get the next book in the series.

What I’ve observed, having raised my own kids, is that kids enjoy their favorite books for way longer than any adult will have patience for. But they are absorbing these books on different levels, and milking the pleasure out of them that we can only guess at.

So a little nudge into the next chapter book series never hurts. But by and large, leave them to roam in the fields where they are having the most fun. That’s where the joy of reading is cultivated. And for sure, the happiest memories of childhood will reside in those moments of delight.

These occur naturally in conversation all the time. But to the people the world who