Balto of the Blue Dawn

Reviewed by: Sheila Dube - Springvale Public Library, Springvale, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: June 23, 2016

Review

This is the 54th installment in the popular Magic Treehouse Series. Osborne provides a two-page prologue about Jack and Annie's history with the treehouse and the magic that Morgan Le Fay and Merlin use to assist Jack and Annie on their missions. The prologue will equip new readers to the series. This episode sends Jack and Annie to the Territory of Alaska in 1925 with magic gold dust to give them special skills and stardust to erase the memory of everyone they come in contact with during the mission. They find themselves in Nome, Alaska where a diphtheria outbreak is claiming many lives. The master musher, Gunner Kaasen, is coming with special medicine, but he has been delayed due to a blizzard. Jack and Annie ask for the skill of being a musher and they are able to track Kassen with his lead dog Balto down and help him get the medicine through. Readers will learn about husky dog behaviors, the extreme weather in Alaska and enjoy the different ways that magic is used to help history. Osborne provides historical facts and the controversy surrounding Kassen and Balto's trek in an Author's note in the back.

Overall Book Score: good