Mapping of Chinese and English Magic Tree House Books 神奇樹屋中英書名對照

Age:  8 (Thumper), 7.5 (Astroboy)
Grade: 3rd
Pages: 100+

I was going to review Magic Tree House because Astroboy is on his second cycle through the books.  Then I saw that I actually reviewed it already when Thumper went through it 3 years ago.  If you want to see the inside pages, check out the post!

However, I really really want to talk about my love for Magic Tree House and I couldn’t squeeze in Astroboy’s info in the original post.  So maybe a whole new informational post?

What Is Magic Tree House?

Magic Tree House is about a pair of siblings, Jack (8) and Annie (7), who finds this stack of magical books in their treehouse.  They can point to any book and it’ll take them there.  Every time they go, they get into an adventure.  The books cleverly incorporates factual information without sounding like a recitation of facts.   

Each book is fairly short, only 100 pages, so actually closer to the Bridging book Level 2.   So suitable for 2nd grade and up probably.  But it can be a bit hard for kids here because of the subject vocabulary and the 親子天下 article ranked it at Bridging Book Level 4, so that’s why I put it at 3rd grade.

The numbering is actually a bit wonky.  They split the series up into two series in 2017.  Now, there’s the original Magic Tree House series for younger readers and a new advanced Magic Tree House Merlin Mission series for advanced readers.   There is also a set of Magic Tree House Fact Trackers.

I think Taiwanese book numberings are based on the old series which are:

• 1-28 Magic Tree House, AR levels 2.6-3.4
• 29-54 Merlin Missions e.g. Merlin Mission 1-26, AR levels 3.7-3.9
• 1-20 Magic Tree House Fact Trackers (no 1-1 mapping)

But there is a new #29-#31 in English for the Magic Tree House adventures.

Where To Get The Books

For English, we borrow ebooks from our local library, bought audiobooks from audible.com and downloaded from our local library.

Because the Chinese version is actually bilingual (half the book in English and half Chinese), I never found a need to actually buy the English version.   For Chinese, you can buy it at major Taiwanese bookstores, with Costco being a very good deal.  You can purchase it online at Costco and just have it delivered to your Taiwanese address while in Taiwan.

There are some Chinese audiobooks floating around.  Not all of them are the greatest.  You have to weed.  Your options are:

1. Ximalaya
2. Baobao88
3. 愛樂電台 （only first 8)

Head over to my Downloading Audio from Ximalaya post for instructions on how to download these audio files.

How Astroboy Read the Books

I wanted to point out how Astroboy read these books because I learned something about reading from watching my two kids.  With both kids, I typically think, “Hey maybe they are ready for Magic Treehouse!”, but when I show it to them, they don’t want to.  Hmmm…maybe it’s too hard?

Then I load the first few English audiobooks and let them listen.  They’re typically hooked and because they can read in Chinese but not English at this point, I then offer them the Chinese books and they take off.

With Astroboy, I wasn’t as diligent.  After he read all 54 books in Chinese, I just let him listen to the whole thing in English, up to book 40+.  Now there was a problem.  The English narration is way more compelling than the Chinese books.   He doesn’t like the Chinese version as much now.

He was doing a third repeat listen of the English version.  However our English audiobooks only go up to 48, he wanted to read the rest.  I ended up borrowing the ebooks from a local library and he could actually read them.

Oops. He can’t be switching over to reading in English, even though he could use the phonics practice!  So now I quickly borrowed the Chinese version from a friend.  Thankfully his Chinese is still stronger so he ended up re-reading the Chinese books anyway.

Then I found out these are 3rd grade books.  So somehow Astroboy, who has never read an early reader or early chapter books, went from his All About Reading curriculum straight to these books.  He finds the early reader books too boring now and refuses to check them out from the library when I show them to him.  Even though he is probably still at those level reading-wise.  On top of that, he’s repeating English phrases from the audiobooks and his English grammar has improved tremendously.  This was my concern last year and the reason why I pushed into more English this year.

It doesn’t mean he’s now a third grade reader.  But both of my kids showed me, 1) audiobooks are amazing and can improve your kids comprehension and reading level and 2)  if a book is interesting enough they will read it, even if it’s levels above.

I wish I’d just splurged and bought these sets earlier. Now, because he’s almost past this level and I don’t know if I can justify the purchase.   Thankfully, I do have the encyclopedia set.

But if you’re on the fence, they’re so worth it because:

• It’s bilingual!  You can practice reading in both if you’ve got a kid who likes to repeat read.
• It covers multiple subjects.  You can pull out relevant books when you’re studying them.  Especially useful for homeschoolers.
• The books gradually go up in reading level.  Helps lead the kids into gradually harder books.
• The encyclopedia is one grade level up so if you’re done with the series, you can pull up the non-fiction encyclopedia and continue studying the subject.

Every day when I see him reading the book or re-listening, I ask myself, should I just buy it?  Though my friend is very generous in lending us the books, because these are useful in topic studies, it’s much much nicer to be able to just pull it off the shelf when I need it, since I’m not a planner.  I don’t get around to planning ahead and remembering to ask my friend to borrow specific books.

I’m going to go pull some flower petals now.

Magic Tree House Chart

Here’s my reference chart for myself so I can figure out exactly which book I need for what subject.  #29-#31 are the NEW numbering system.  The Chinese version don’t have them.

Merlin Missions Chart

Astroboy is constantly talking about King Arthur and Merlin and who knows what else.  He’s really taken to the characters introduced in the Merlin Missions series.  Now I have to go find some King Arthur books for him to read.  #29-#31 are the OLD numbering system.  The Chinese version has it.   I kind of put all Camelot related books under History – England as that’s the closest subject I could think of.

Magic Tree Encyclopedia

To get the Chinese Encyclopedia #s to sort properly, I made the encyclopedias that don’t have a Chinese equivalent to have a # of 1000.  There are only 20 Chinese Encyclopedias even though the English version has 40.  MTH = Magic Tree House,  MM = Merlin Missions