No one understands the brilliance of childhood like Mary Pope Osborne, who launched the New York Times bestselling children’s book series Magic Tree House in 1992. Osborne, who spent many years honing her skills through young adult novels and ghostwriting gigs, struck gold in her 40s with a story about brother and sister time travelers Jack and Annie, whose journeys in an enchanted tree house take young readers on missions through historical eras, animal adventures, scientific exploration, and more.
Over 32 years, the Magic Tree House series has sold more than 145 million copies worldwide, and Osborne has never tired of the gifts her career has given her. “Every word I ever wrote was a plus,” she told me at her Connecticut home in 2011, “because I didn’t plan on any of it.”
In addition to the 64 books in her Magic Tree House series, Osborne published a memoir in 2022 for her young readers: Memories and Life Lessons from the Magic Tree House. When we spoke again by phone in April, she shared how she connects with her audience of 7-year-olds, what she realized about her childhood while writing her memoir, and her advice for adults who want to recapture the “sweet spot” of being a kid.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I heard the writer Jill McCorkle recently say, “If we forget what it feels like to be a child, in many ways, we forget what it feels like to feel.”
That’s lovely. Yeah.
It made me think of you. When we first spoke, you shared that being able to access that childhood frame of mind was what made your career possible.
And I think, oddly for me, the fact that I didn’t have my own kids made me never have to grow up, in that sense of differentiating. So I could relate to my readers on par with them. They’d come up in age and sophistication of talking to me, and I’d go down, and then we would find this plateau where age really was not a big issue.
But one thing I’ve discovered since the last time we talked—the thrill of this age now—is that the first Magic Tree House readers are now in their 20s and 30s, and when I meet them, they tell me how much the books meant to them. I love their warmth and enthusiasm, but I tell them they’re giving me more credit than I deserve. It’s not me. It’s who they were when they read those books that they are feeling appreciation for. My readers are usually 7 and 8, and so much is lost over the years that follow. Seven and 8 is starting to really look out at the world. They don’t know yet that they’re too little to have opinions, and they have lots of opinions and thoughts and an instinctive sense of fairness. It’s a sweet spot.
There’s a quote, “Give me a child until he is 7, and I will show you the man.” So you hold that essence forever, but when you get older, you have to tap into it, you have to find it again, you have to dig down and release it to yourself. In my lucky life, I have been writing from the point of view of 7- and 8-year-olds for 32 years now. So, I’ve been in a state of woke for a long, long time. It’s wonderful.
And 7 years old is a beautiful place to be: all optimism and possibility.
Exactly. You’re not yet taking everything for granted. I hate that feeling of not paying attention. And I catch myself at it all the time, not even noticing the new flowers we’re finally getting in our late spring. If I spent the rest of my days just trying to take in what’s around me, it wouldn’t be nearly enough time. But it would be the beginning of figuring out why we’re here.
The fabulous thing that comes to life with writing these books is that I get to study. I’m working on one about sea otters, and in my mind, I get to go under the sea and get close to them without ever leaving my house. It’s so rejuvenating and delicious, and you just can’t believe how intricate these lives are that you never know about. This will be my 65th book, and there are always subjects that blow my mind. We’re talking essentially about wonder. That’s the glue that not only connects us to other people—the right kind of people who love us and accept us—but also to nature and history and learning. I can feel pessimistic about all the discord and the confusion and the technology in our lives, but you can start to come out of that with your pursuit of knowledge from now and in the past.
Absolutely. Without curiosity, I would be in a different place.
That’s a key word: Curiosity. And curiosity that’s open and not ready to pounce on something, but ready to receive something or pay attention to something. What would be hard for me is not to categorize everything too quickly. I’m working on that right now because sometimes when I meet people, I’m so quick to put them in a box just to sort of accelerate the exchange. But there must be a way to just take them in almost phenomenologically as, “Who is this? Who is this interesting person?” I’m just thinking: If you set about a life of interviewing and questioning, you’re putting yourself in a fabulous position to be open and learn from others. It’s a good choice.
It’s a surprising choice, not one I would have predicted making when I was a painfully shy kid. But here we are.
That’s what we do: We make our weaknesses our strengths.
Oh, I love that. You talked a little about that in your memoir, how you realized something new about your younger self while writing one of the chapters.
I listed everything I ever tried to do as a kid, which was so comical because I couldn’t do anything. I listed them and thought, Now, where am I going with this? That I’m just a failure? Well, no, it’s that I tried everything. That’s the virtue there. When I wrote that two years ago, it was like I had just discovered that I had tried everything.
It was the perfect reframing: “I was a person who tried things.”
I think it’s so hilarious in that book when I say I thought I would be a professional singer. I didn’t even know how to sing with the piano.
I mean, as a kid, I thought I would be a guest on Johnny Carson. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do. Even now, I have no discernible talent beyond writing.
Oh, that’s great! I love that! I don’t have any talent except books. I tell people, if I hadn’t found this, I’d be in an institution!
It’s about appreciating things outside yourself so you’re not the subject of your thinking so much. Because mostly, when we think about ourselves, we’re not that happy with what we think about.
So, how do we get back the essence of being a 7-year-old? What do you do to get there?
It sounds so simple, but I get in my car and ride by myself through the countryside. Or I might go to a little town and have lunch by myself, take a book with me. I will take a walk – I’m not real brave, as you know, so I won’t just take a walk in the woods by myself –but I’ll walk in a park or sit in the sun, and I’ll take a book with me on how to identify wildflowers or trees. I love words, and I love playing with them. I have notebooks filled with nothing more than single words, ordinary words that I think are kind of alive.
It’s about appreciating things outside yourself so you’re not the subject of your thinking so much. Because mostly, when we think about ourselves, we’re not that happy with what we think about. All the books I’m gathering now have to do with learning the geometry of flowers, how a color got its name, and how it was used through nature. I have a paint set just to play with color, not to create anything I’ll ever show anyone. I collect gardening magazines, not because I want to garden, but because I want to look at how others garden. I don’t acquire any knowledge anymore to compare myself with it. It’s about just enjoying it.
Children naturally do this because the world’s new to them. But as adults, we have to keep making the world new again for ourselves. And if you have that attitude, then every day is an adventure. ♣
If this sparked a memory for you, or if you have a practice or a hobby that helps you connect to the kid you once were, please share it below in the comments. I’d love to hear more stories of how to be “forever seven.”
And a quick recommendation: If you have not seen the Britsh documentary series Up by Michael Apted and Paul Almond, it’s so worth your time—provided you can locate it on one of your various streaming services. The series follows 14 individuals between 1964 and 2019 as they grow from age 7 to 63. (It heavily uses the “Give me a child until he is 7 …” quote Mary Pope Osborne mentioned above.) It is a lengthy, fascinating look at young dreams, old dreams, striving, falling, evolving, and simply being human.
NEXT WEEK: A U.S. Air Force veteran tells OPP how to lead a contemplative life.