All of a sudden it's all Magic Treehouse all the time in our household. The Kiddo came home with two more Magic Treehouse books from his school library. This series has definitely caught his attention, which is great.
Kiddo is six, and in first grade. I've been reading these books out loud to him. He borrows the ones that interest him from the library, so we have not been reading the series in order.
This book is the fourth in the series, and it represents an ending point for the initial ongoing plot. In this story, the main characters Jack and Annie meet the owner of the mysterious Magic Treehouse and learn some of its secrets.
And there are also pirates. Including a real villain. Other books we've read in the series so far either had no clear-cut villain, or the villains were nameless menaces. This book features Cap'n Bones, a pirate eager for gold, and in need of the kids' help because he can't read the treasure map he acquired.
This book features a lot of action, and some very real peril for the kids. It's exciting and fast-paced, but I felt like Cap'n Bones could have been fleshed out a bit more as a character. (fleshed! bones! Okay, sorry. I'll stop now.)
The pirate adventure also gets cut short a bit due to the need to develop the ongoing meta-plot in the final chapters. The story ends on something of an infodump, which, as fun and creative as it is (and it is both of those things) is still a big chunk of explanation rather than, well, swashbuckling adventure.
I am glad that the series got to continue from here, and the Kiddo is definitely looking forward to more. I believe we're scheduled to visit the Amazon jungle in the next book (in our order, anyway).