Mary Pope Osborne

Their magic tree house takes Jack and Annie deep into the sea, where they meet up with dolphins, sharks, and octopi as they search for the answer to an ancient riddle.

Dolphins at Daybreak

Sarah Sammis

Sean received a box set of the first eight Magic Tree House books about a year ago. He and Ian read through them. Now that he's in second grade he's allowed to check out chapter books from the library. He has decided to continue reading the Magic Tree House Books and has wrangled me this time.

In Dolphins at Daybreak (Magic Tree House #9) by Mary Pope Osborne, Annie and Jack reunite with Morgan La Fay. She's having so much trouble with Merlin that her library duties are being put on the back burner. She decides to recruit the siblings to become master librarians if they can solve four riddles.

Riddle number one takes Jack and Annie to a small coral reef probably somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. There they get distracted by an abandoned two man sub. Most of their adventures in this volume take place under water.

Annie in the pair is the doer. She jumps in feet first while Jack does the book work: taking notes, reading through the whatever book Morgan gives them and so forth. They make a good team.

The riddle in this book was pretty easy for me as an adult to figure out but was enough of a stumper for Sean to add something extra. Jack's notebook provides chances for Sean and me to talk about the main topics in the book. We discussed coral, research submarines, octopuses, dolphins and of course the solution to the riddle.

The only thing that really bugs me about these novels is the way "said" is used at the end of questions. Example: "What's that?" Jack said. When I'm reading out loud to Sean I always edit those on the fly to "asked" from "said." This complaint though is a minor pet peeve of mine. I am despite my pet peeve enjoying reading through the series with my son and I do plan on going back to read the first eight.

Dolphins at Daybreak

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