“Thanks to Dr. Pasteur’s institute, we will soon have cures for many more deadly diseases,” said Mr. Bell.
“And thanks to Mr. Bell, I’ll be able to call you all on the telephone and tell you about it!” joked Dr. Pasteur.
Everyone laughed.
“And this is just the beginning!” said Annie. “Someday people will carry tiny telephones in their pockets and talk to other people anywhere in the world.”
“Uh, Annie, we’d better be going,” said Jack. He didn’t want the others to know he and Annie were from the future.
But Annie kept talking. “And there’ll be these things called computers,” she said, “that can give you instant information about anything, anytime—”
“Annie!” said Jack.
“And get this!” she said. She pointed to the full moon overhead. “Someday people will actually walk on that moon up there!”
The men all chuckled. “You have a most delightful imagination,” said Mr. Eiffel.
“And that is a wonderful thing!” said Mr. Edison. “Without imagination, none of us would be standing here tonight.”
“Well, we’d better be getting home now,” said Jack.
“And where is your home? The moon?” teased Mr. Eiffel.
“No, it’s Frog Creek, Pennsylvania, in the United States,” said Jack.
“How will you get there?” said Mr. Bell.
“In our magic tree house,” said Annie.
The men laughed. Jack tried to laugh with them. “Ha. Good one, Annie,” he said. “Well, let’s go.”
“Annie, I hope you and your brother have a safe trip in your magic tree house,” said Mr. Eiffel. “You have both been most entertaining guests. Please come visit me anytime.”
Jack and Annie waved good-bye to the four men. Then they climbed carefully down the spiral staircase and started down the 1,652 steps of the Eiffel Tower.
It was much easier walking down 1,652 steps than walking up. Jack and Annie walked down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down—until finally they stepped onto the ground.
Jack noticed that the two-seater bicycle was gone. “I guess those two people came and got their bike,” he said.
Jack and Annie looked around. Exhibits were covered and gates were locked. All the motion and noise of the World’s Fair had ended for the day. The living encyclopedia had gone to sleep. Suddenly Jack felt very exhausted.
“Home?” said Annie.
Jack nodded. “Frog Creek,” he said, sighing.
Jack and Annie hurried over the bridge and across the avenue. “Those guys were really nice,” said Jack as they walked through the dark, rose-scented park.
“I know,” said Annie. “They acted like regular people. But they’ve done all those amazing things.”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “They’re like magicians in disguise.”
Jack and Annie came to the magic tree house. They climbed up the rope ladder and looked one last time out the window. The Eiffel Tower seemed to stand watch over Paris, its spotlights sweeping over the city.
Jack pulled Merlin’s letter out of his satchel. He opened it and pointed to the words Frog Creek. “I wish we could go—”
Before Jack could finish making the wish, he and Annie were bathed in brilliant white light. Jack looked up. One of the beams of the tower’s spotlights had come to rest on the tree house. It shined on them for a long moment.
With both hands, Annie waved wildly into the blinding light. Jack waved, too.
“Good night, magicians!” Annie shouted.
Jack laughed. Then he pointed at Merlin’s letter again and finished his wish: “… home to Frog Creek,” he said.
The wind started to blow.
The tree house started to spin.
It spun faster and faster.
Then everything was still.
Absolutely still.
Jack opened his eyes. He and Annie were dressed in their regular clothes again. Dusky light filtered into the tree house. No time at all had passed in Frog Creek.
“That was a great trip,” Jack said softly.
“Really great,” said Annie.
Jack pulled the guide book to the 1889 Paris World’s Fair out of his backpack. He left it on the tree house floor along with Merlin’s letter. But he kept Teddy and Kathleen’s book of magic rhymes.
“So. We have three rhymes left for our fourth adventure,” he said.
“Quack, quack,” said Annie.
“Very funny,” said Jack. “Ready?”
“Yep,” said Annie. She climbed down the rope ladder, and Jack followed.
As they started walking through the darkening woods, the world felt familiar and ordinary again. “I can’t believe we just met all those guys,” said Jack. “I can’t believe I actually shook hands with Thomas Edison.”
“You mean with Alva,” said Annie.
“Yeah. Alva…. Wow,” Jack said softly.
“What do you think Merlin meant when he said that we had lived all their secrets, as well as learned them?” said Annie.
“Well, think about it,” said Jack. “We wouldn’t have gone on our mission in the first place if we didn’t have a love for adventure and responsibility—like Mr. Eiffel.”
“Right,” said Annie. “And we sure put a lot of sweat into our mission—when we climbed the stairs.”
“And we didn’t lose hope when the door of the institute was locked,” said Jack. “We stuck around until another door opened.”
“And you prepared us by reading from the research book,” said Annie, “so chance favored us when we heard someone call Thomas Edison ‘the Wizard of Menlo Park.’”
“And chance favored us when those two people lent us their bike,” said Jack.
“Actually, I don’t think that was chance,” Annie said.
“What do you mean?” said Jack.
“Did you notice that man looked more like a kid in disguise?” said Annie. “His beard and mustache looked kind of fakey.”
“I did notice that!” said Jack. “But there was so much going on, I didn’t have time to think about it.”
“And the woman talked in that funny, squeaky voice, and the veil of her hat covered her face,” said Annie. “And the guy told us to spin like a whirlwind. That was a weird thing to say, but it reminded us of the rhyme in Teddy and Kathleen’s book.”
Jack nodded slowly. Then he smiled. “You think those two were actually Teddy and Kathleen?” he said.
“Maybe,” said Annie. “On our last three missions, I felt like they were with us, helping us get to the right place at the right time.”
“Next time, maybe we can catch them when they help us,” said Jack.
Annie laughed. “Yeah, we’ll try to surprise them for a change!”
“Good plan,” said Jack.
A bell jingled in the distance.
“Ice cream!” said Annie.
“Yep, that’s our mission now!” said Jack.
The ice cream bell jingled again. Jack and Annie ran out of the woods into the soft summer twilight.
The famous words of Alexander Graham Bell have given many people hope in the face of disappointment: “When one door closes another door opens. But we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
Bell tried many doors as he attempted to invent a device that could transmit a human request. After countless experiments, while working on his invention one day, Bell called out to his assistant in the next room: “Mr. Watson, come here.” To their surprise, Watson heard Bell’s request over a transmitter they’d been working on. These turned out to be the first words ever heard over a telephone.
When Thomas Alva Edison gave his famous quote, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” he really meant it! He was always a hard worker. As a child, Edison read nearly every book in the public library. When he was only twelve, he sold snacks on trains and had another
business selling vegetables. When he was thirteen, he started his own newspaper, and at fifteen he became an expert telegraph operator.
In his spare time, Edison worked on inventions. Early on, a blow to his ear and a case of scarlet fever damaged his hearing. The silence of his deafness only helped him concentrate. Eventually Edison opened a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. There he invented the first incandescent electric lightbulb and the first phonograph, or record player. A few years later, he created the first silent motion pictures. By the end of his career, Edison had patents for over 1,000 inventions. When he died in 1931, households all over America dimmed their electric lights to honor him.
By the time Louis Pasteur stated that “chance favors the prepared mind,” he had learned a lot about being well prepared. As a medical researcher in Paris, Pasteur studied microbes for many years. He hoped to understand how germs and infectious diseases were related. Pasteur’s hard work led to the “germ theory” in medicine. He developed a life-saving vaccine to fight rabies, and he created a process called “pasteurization” that uses heat to kill germs in food. Today the Pasteur Institute in Paris is still a very important medical research center that helps prevent and treat deadly diseases.
The French engineer Gustave Eiffel gave much credit for his success to his parents. He said, “From my father I inherited a taste for adventure, from my mother a love of work and responsibility.” Eiffel had many great adventures in his career. Using the new technology of building with iron, he designed innovative bridges and viaducts. He even helped design the Statue of Liberty for New York City. But his most amazing feat was the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the tallest structure in the world until 1930.
Eiffel faced a lot of resistance to building the tower. At first, many people thought the design was terribly ugly; others were sure the tower would topple over in strong winds. But Eiffel had designed his tower so that the wind could blow safely through its open latticework. In time it became the most beloved symbol of Paris. Today the Eiffel Tower has over 6 million visitors a year.
Thomas Alva Edison actually met with Gustave Eiffel in Eiffel’s tower office during the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. Also on his visit to Paris, Edison met with Louis Pasteur at the Pasteur Institute. The only one of the four great men not in Paris that summer was Alexander Graham Bell, but a display of his new telephone invention was one of the most popular exhibits at the World’s Fair.
Here’s a special preview of
Magic Tree House #36
(A Merlin Mission)
Blizzard of the Blue Moon
Available now!
Excerpt copyright © 2006 by Mary Pope Osborne.
Published by Random House Children's Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
The November sky was gray with clouds. Jack sat reading in front of the living room fire.
“Who wants hot chocolate?” his dad called from the kitchen.
“Me, please!” said Jack.
The front door burst open, and with a gust of cold wind, Annie rushed inside. “Jack! Guess what!” she whispered. “It’s back!”
“How do you know?” said Jack.
“I was walking home from the library”— Annie paused to catch her breath—“and I saw a flash in the sky above the woods. The last time that happened—”
Before she could finish the sentence, Jack jumped up. “Dad, Annie and I are going to go outside for a while!” he shouted. “Can the hot chocolate wait till we get back?”
“Sure, have fun!” their dad called from the kitchen.
“I have to get my pack,” Jack said to Annie. “Meet you on the porch.”
“Don’t forget the rhyme book!” said Annie.
Annie slipped outside and Jack ran up to his room. He grabbed his backpack. He checked to make sure their book of magic rhymes was inside. Good, there it was.
Jack charged back downstairs. He pulled on his boots, put on his jacket, tied a scarf around his neck, grabbed his mittens, and headed out the door.
“Come on!” said Annie.
Jack could see his breath in the cold air. “Brrr,” he said. “Let’s hurry!”
Jack and Annie ran down the street and into the Frog Creek woods. They wove between the trees, their boots crunching through the fallen leaves.
Jack stopped. The magic tree house was back. High in a tall oak tree, it was silhouetted against the gray November sky. “You were right,” he said to Annie. “Good work.”
“Thanks,” Annie said. She ran to the rope ladder and started up. Jack followed her.
When they climbed inside the tree house, Jack and Annie saw a book and a scroll of parchment paper lying on the floor. Annie picked up the scroll, unrolled it, and read aloud.
Dear Jack and Annie of Frog Creek,
I am sending you on one more mission to
prove that you can use magic wisely. This
poem will guide you.
—M.
The very last unicorn
Is now hidden well
By those who have put him
Under a spell.
Four centuries, four decades
From that afternoon,
At the end of November,
Before the blue moon,
He will wake once more
And be free to go home
If you call out his name:
Divine Flower of Rome.
You must coax him to stand
Once his name is spoken.
His chain will break
And the spell, too, be broken.
Then a young girl must love him
And show him the way,
Lest he be trapped forever
On public display.
If he loses this chance
To rise and depart,
All magic will fade
From his horn and his heart.
“A unicorn!” breathed Annie. “I love him already. I’ll show him the way!”
“But this poem is really hard to understand,” said Jack. “What kind of research book did Morgan send us?”
He picked up the book that had been left for them by Morgan le Fay, the librarian of Camelot. The cover showed a row of skyscrapers. The title was New York City Guide Book, 1938.
“New York City?” said Annie. “I love New York City! Remember the great time we had there with Aunt Mallory?”
“Yeah, I love it, too,” said Jack. “But why would there be a unicorn in New York City in 1938? A unicorn is an ancient fantasy creature. New York City’s a real place, and 1938 is not even that long ago.”
“You’re right,” said Annie. “It sounds like a hard mission. But don’t forget we have Teddy and Kathleen’s magic rhymes to help us.”
“Yeah,” said Jack. He pulled out the book given to them by their friends Teddy and Kathleen, two young enchanters of Camelot. “The problem is, we can only use each rhyme once, and we’ve already used seven out of the ten.”
“Which means we still have three left,” said Annie. “What are they?”
“Pull a Cloud from the Sky,” said Jack.
“Cool,” said Annie.
“Yeah, it is,” said Jack. “But I’m not sure it will be much use.” He looked back at the book. “Find a Treasure You Must Never Lose,” he said.
“Hey, that’s a really good one!” said Annie. “The unicorn’s a treasure. So that rhyme could take care of our whole mission.”
“But it only partly fits,” said Jack. “You could call the unicorn a treasure. But once we find him, we have to lose him. He has to go back home.”
“Oh, right…,” said Annie. “What else?”
“Your favorite,” said Jack. “Turn into Ducks.”
Annie laughed. “I can’t wait to use that one!” she said.
“I hope we never use that one,” said Jack. He didn’t want to waddle around and quack like a duck. “These leftover rhymes don’t seem very helpful to me.”
“Well, let’s just wait and see,” said Annie
. “But now…” She held up Morgan’s research book and smiled.
Jack nodded. “New York City, here we come,” he said. He pointed at the book’s cover. “I wish we could go there!”
The wind started to blow.
The tree house started to spin.
It spun faster and faster.
Then everything was still.
Absolutely still.
The wind started to blow.
The tree house started to spin.
It spun faster and faster.
Then everything was still.
Absolutely still.
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Magic Tree House® Books
#1: DINOSAURS BEFORE DARK
#2: THE KNIGHT AT DAWN
#3: MUMMIES IN THE MORNING
#4: PIRATES PAST NOON
#5: NIGHT OF THE NINJAS
#6: AFTERNOON ON THE AMAZON
#7: SUNSET OF THE SABERTOOTH
#8: MIDNIGHT ON THE MOON
#9: DOLPHINS AT DAYBREAK
#10: GHOST TOWN AT SUNDOWN
#11: LIONS AT LUNCHTIME
#12: POLAR BEARS PAST BEDTIME
#13: VACATION UNDER THE VOLCANO
#14: DAY OF THE DRAGON KING
#15: VIKING SHIPS AT SUNRISE
#16: HOUR OF THE OLYMPICS
#17: TONIGHT ON THE TITANIC
#18: BUFFALO BEFORE BREAKFAST
Night of the New Magicians Page 5