A podcast interview with Mary Pope Osborne and Will Osborne on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.
Join us as we delve into the enchanting world of Magic Tree House ON STAGE with bestselling children’s author Mary Pope Osborne and her husband, playwright Will Osborne.
In this episode, we explore the journey of transforming the beloved book series into captivating stage musicals, igniting a passion for literacy and fostering growth in children.
Mary Pope Osborne and Will Osborne Talk About:
- From the genesis of the Magic Tree House series to its immense success, Mary shares insights into the inspiration behind the stories and how they evolved into a cultural phenomenon.
- Discover how Mary and Will’s decision to adapt the books into musicals, starting with “Christmas in Camelot,” led to the creation of a rich library of theatrical productions.
- Explore the magic behind the scenes as we uncover the collaborative efforts of the Magic Tree House team, including editors, artists, writers, and managers, who work seamlessly to bring these stories to life on stage.
- Learn how theater and book reading intertwine, inspiring imagination and fostering connections with beloved characters.
- Tune in to hear Mary’s admiration for the musical adaptations, which retain the essence of the books’ life lessons without being didactic. Delve into the symbiotic relationship between theater and literacy, as witnessing stories come alive on stage enhances children’s love for reading and encourages personal growth.
- As we wrap up, join us in expressing gratitude to Mary Pope Osborne and Will Osborne for their time and dedication. And don’t forget to visit the Magic Tree House ON STAGE website to embark on your own magical journey through literature and theater.
Listen to the Interview
Read the Interview
Bianca Schulze
Hi, Mary and Will. Welcome to The Growing Readers Podcast.
Mary Pope Osborne
Thank you! It’s great to be here.
Bianca Schulze
It’s such an honor. I mean, I have three kids. Anyone who’s listened to my podcast before knows I talk about my kids on and off, and they all have read the Magic Treehouse series. So, I’m excited to focus our chat today on the adaptations of the Magic Treehouse series into stage musicals and the launch of your new Magic Treehouse onstage website. But before going there, I thought we could do some icebreaker questions. How does that sound?
Will Osborne
Great.
Mary Pope Osborne
Sounds good.
Bianca Schulze
Awesome. Well, I mean, this is a fun one. I’ve noticed that many authors that come on the show have pets at home, many cats and dogs. Do you have any pets?
Mary Pope Osborne
Oh, yes. We have a little Yorkie and a little rescue mix, and they rule our house. In fact, they’re away from us now, back in the back of the house, because they would take over this whole podcast. They think that we work for them, and they have no respect, but they are a delight.
Will Osborne
We’re not big on discipline and training, but we’re really big on love. We just love them like crazy.
Bianca Schulze
Yeah, I hear you on that. My dog is also in a separate place for me right now, or she, too, would try to steal the show. What is it that you love about dogs so much?
Mary Pope Osborne
Well, I think because we’re both in the arts and imaginative, we impose a lot of character on them, so we interpret what they’re doing as if they are book characters or film characters, and it makes it so funny.
Will Osborne
Our first dog we had was just one female terrier, and we had her for, what, 16 years?
Mary Pope Osborne
Yeah.
Will Osborne
And then we wound up with two of the same breeds, and we realized that having two, they become a comedy show. They’re hilarious together. So, it’s not just about having a companion; it’s about having constant entertainment. And so now, for a while, we had three, and now we have two.
Mary Pope Osborne
Yeah. And the way they relate to each other just cracks us up. And it seems like the more you impose character on them, the more they live up to their part. So, we always talk about the dogs. It’s really nutty.
Bianca Schulze
I love it. I love it. Well, is there anything that you both do daily that you think would be the most relatable or even surprising to listeners?
Mary Pope Osborne
Well.
Will Osborne
Maybe. I’m also a musician, so I practice guitar daily, and we both read a lot. That shouldn’t be surprising to anybody, but we both love to read and almost always have a book or two or three going, and particularly Mary. The stack of books on her side of the bed, the bedside table, is about to reach the ceiling. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Mary Pope Osborne
I read a lot of things at the same time. I mean, I’ll pick up this book, and then ten minutes later, I’ll pick up that book and then another book. And that’s the way I do research, too, for the Magic Treehouse is I get a great library on my table and lots of pages from the Internet and a lot of sources, and I take a little bit from everything, and I’m totally focused, and somehow they all blend together to give me a kind of sense of the place and what I need to say about it. So, I’m really a very eclectic reader, but I have tons of books going all the time.
Bianca Schulze
I love it. Well, then, if you will describe your big, large stack that you have, so obviously, you can’t name them all. What’s the first title that jumps into your mind? Either something that you’re reading right now or maybe you just finished.
Mary Pope Osborne
Oh, good question. I’m rereading Anna Karenina from Tolstoy. There’s a new translation, so I have that beside the bed, and I have a book about Tolstoy’s biography beside the bed, but that’s there, along with the history of the Middle East and several books of philosophy and several books of painting and arts. So, it’s just such a varied collection. I don’t really read that much popular fiction. I really love old writing the best.
Bianca Schulze
Well, Will, since you have a theater background and music and acting, what kind of role has reading and literature played in your life? Or how do you think it inspired you to sort of become who you became as an adult?
Will Osborne
When I was a kid, I read a lot. And if I was reading a Tarzan book or a book by Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz, and the extended series that came from that, I would then go out in the woods and make up imaginary games, almost always by myself, and a stick would become a sword, a tree would become a knight that I was battling or whatever. And I also always, even as a kid, loved movies and seeing acting. And I knew it was acting. I didn’t make them. I knew I wasn’t watching real life. But I was so fascinated by the process of acting, even as a young kid, that it wasn’t until I was in college that I actually started acting. And that’s played a huge part in my writing. I sort of transitioned from being an actor to a writer some years back. And I think I learned as much about writing from being an actor all those years as I would have had I gotten a degree in creative fiction from some university somewhere, just sort of living in the words of great writers, playwrights, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Tennessee Williams. Just does something to the way you hear language. And I think that’s been hugely important to me, both as a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and lyrics. As a lyricist, there’s a rhythm to language that I’m just fascinated by.
Bianca Schulze
What about you, Mary? Any childhood memory that you think established you as a reader, or did you not consider yourself a reader until you were an adult?
Mary Pope Osborne
Only that through my imagination, I was also interested in theater growing up, and I was always making up characters and telling stories, but out loud and acting them out. And I was an army brat, so I traveled a lot and was always reinventing myself everywhere we moved to. And it was really not until I became a young adult and fell in love with Will that he encouraged me to write. And I started writing. We were living in New York City then, and I’d go up to the rooftop of our old tenement building and, take a tablet in a director’s chair and start writing my first stories. So, it came right out of my imaginative impulses growing up, I think, and theater played a big role in my life.
Bianca Schulze
Well, let’s go back in time a little bit here. So, Mary, if you could take us back to the beginning of the Magic Treehouse series, and I just would love to know how it all got started for you. How did the first story in that magic house come to you? And then the second part of that question is, did you ever imagine from that first story the huge success that the Magic Treehouse would have?
Mary Pope Osborne
No. I had written a number of books already. Random House called me in and said, would you like to do a series for younger readers? And I didn’t really want to do the same thing over and over in a series because I’d always written about history and mythology and young adult novels, and in my reading taste, I was very eclectic in my writing taste. But then I thought if I did time travel, I could do the series because I could go to a different place in every book, but I didn’t know how I’d get the kids back in time. And I tried a magic cellar, magic whistles, a magic artist studio, a magic museum. All those were full manuscripts that didn’t work out, and I was about to give up that project of time travel for younger readers. And Will and I had a cabin in Pennsylvania, and we were walking in the woods, and we saw an old treehouse. And that was a year into me exploring the topic. And instantly, it just sort of fell into place, us talking about it. And then, by the next day, I was off and running with the Magic Treehouse. And no, I was just going to do four books and then get back to my other work. But after four books, something happened that had never happened before. I started getting letters, lots of letters, from teachers and parents and kids, wonderful letters, telling me the books that inspired kids to read or kids sending me their ideas for what I should write about, their pictures, and their own writing. And I signed up to do four more and then four more, and then suddenly, that’s all I was doing. It was just so joyful, and meeting all the readers was just icing on the cake.
Bianca Schulze
That’s fantastic. I think what’s really fun—so with this podcast, everybody’s like, who’s your audience? Pick an audience that you’re speaking to. And the thing with this podcast is that we have so many different kinds of listeners. We have families listening in their cars. We have aspiring authors; we have published authors. We have industry people. So, I feel like what you said is so relevant to everybody in that it took you a while to figure out how to come to this project, and because you stuck with it and you didn’t end up giving up on it, is how we got to where we are. So, thank you for sharing that. It wasn’t so easy to come up with the series in the first place.
Mary Pope Osborne
Well, I tell young readers that sometimes the simplest ideas are the hardest ones to find, and simple is not easy. So not only is it not easy to get a simple idea that has life in it and works, but you have to express that in a simpler way than you would for older readers.
Will Osborne
Then comes the work of refining it. Even after 30 years, any of her books go through six, seven, or eight revisions just based on my input to start with. And then it gets passed on to editors, and we go through that, and it’s never done until the very, very last minute. And there have been so many times when she’s worked on a book, and it’s great. It’s fine, it’s wonderful. But there’s something that’s not quite right, and it’s about to go to the printer. I mean, it’s just on the verge of being out of our hands forever, and something will strike. One of us is like, oh, I know what’s missing in this last scene. And then, just a few paragraphs will make the whole book sparkle.
Mary Pope Osborne
Yeah. Will and I have great chemistry. He’s worked with me on all my books, and probably not counting trades; I have 40 more books. And he’s my first editor for everything. And then I always believe if he sanctions something, I know when to stop. And that’s really important for writers. You have to know when to leave it alone. And he helps me with that, too, as well as my random house editor.
Bianca Schulze
That’s fantastic. Okay, let’s see. All right, so then I want to know, and I think I know the answer to this, but who suggested that the books be turned into a musical? I’m going to guess it was Will.
Will Osborne
Pretty much. I had done a musical with a wonderful composer who’s now one of our closest friends’ ways back in 2000. Oh, it’s probably early 90.
Mary Pope Osborne
92-ish.
Will Osborne
Yeah, 93. And then it was done off-Broadway. And then every time we got together for years after that, we kept saying, oh, jeez, we’d run to each other at openings and stuff, and we said, oh, we got to get together again. We got to do something, do something. So, finally, we settled down to work on a play that was going to be a historical, fictionalized piece of history about the Cardiff giant. And it was fun. It was a fun p. T. Barnum was in it, but we were having some trouble with it. And Mary said, this would probably be great, but, you know, if you did Magic Treehouse, you’d have a built-in audience. You have a framework you can pick up from the books. And the books are very theatrical. There are lots of possibilities for wonderful staging of things. And so, we took about half a second to think and said, okay, toss the other piece away. And then went through. Then, the process was finding which book. How do we get the backstory? How do we get everything together? So, our first criterion was, what is the book with the most theatrical possibilities? And we chose Christmas in Camelot because there’s a huge banquet, there’s a hero’s journey to the other world, there’s magical spells, there are dragons. This is so much in this that we could put on stage that we actually started writing the musical and recorded a cast album before it was ever staged because we wanted to make sure that the music was right. Then, we did a pilot production, the first production, at a theater in Torrington, Connecticut. And it went so well, we decided, well, let’s send this on tour. Let’s do it next year. Let’s take a year to refine everything we know so far. And the next year we used the same theater and put together a touring production that went to 54 cities and had just spectacular effects. We had puppets that were two stories high that were created by one of Jim Henson’s associates. We had a fabulous stage set with a big, burbling golden cauldron full of magical water and castles. And it was just a magnificent show. And it was not a particularly good time to be on the road because the recession was happening, and elections were happening. So, we came back after the year and put everything in storage and then realized that this was so much fun and people seemed to enjoy it so much that this was not the only book that we could adapt, and we could do books that would be more appropriate for children to perform. We could do books that were simpler for communities to stage. And that’s how our whole library now of Magic Treehouse musicals was born.
Bianca Schulze
So fantastic. Do you want to add anything there, Mary?
Mary Pope Osborne
Well, my part in all of this is to just go near the end and see it, and it’s always blowing my mind. It’s always better than my book, frankly. And I just feel like they—Randy Courts and then Jenny Laird, who’s his wife and also a professional playwright—the three of them just take the ball and run with it all the way down the field, and by the time I see the show, I’m in tears. It’s just such a perfect soul and heart of the books. And that’s what I cared about most, is that they keep the life lessons going in the books without being didactic, but just keep it all with a beautiful kind of uplifting feeling. And that’s what they’ve done for all the musicals.
Will Osborne
And you get bits and pieces along.
Mary Pope Osborne
Now and then, they’ll share. They share songs with me, but I can’t picture it all together until I see the whole thing running. But the songs are always a thrill. And you can isolate any of the songs from the shows. There’s about 100 songs they’ve done now for all these shows collectively, and I think any one of them stands alone as just inspiring and wonderful for children.
Bianca Schulze
All right, well, so now you have this new website, which is Magic Treehouse on Stage, and I’ll say the URL for our listeners, which is mthonstage.com. And the new site is a hub that encompasses the full scope of the Magic Treehouse Theater program. So, do you want to talk us through what can be found on the website? And how have you made the musicals accessible for professional theaters, youth theaters, schools, parents, and, of course, our Magic Treehouse fans?
Will Osborne
Okay. Basically, the musicals are divided into two categories. The first is called, we call it theater for young audiences, and they’re designed for professional actors to perform for families and children, and they’re done in regional theaters and on tour and that sort of thing. There are five of those, and then there are four, what you might call kids theater. We work through an organization called Music Theater International for those. And they’re licensed to schools, to community theater groups, and they’re designed primarily for kids to perform for other kids and their families. And the scripts are usually for—those have much bigger casts so that an entire classroom can participate in the performances. So, if there’s an oak tree, it can be like Billy the Oak. So, every kid has a role to play in the kits. Yeah. And those come licensed, as I said, through Music Theater International. And they come with a show kit that includes backing tracks for all the music director’s guides and full scripts. And schools will generally license them with the kit. So, it’s sort of theater in a box, and even for directors who have never worked in theater before, it’s accessible. It’s possible to do. And then theater for young audiences—the scripts are a little more sophisticated. They’re longer.
The kids’ theater, they’re about half an hour. The theater for young audiences is about 40 to 50 minutes to an hour long, so they’re longer. If a theater wants to have an intermission, we can suggest where that can happen. And again, they’re generally for professional actors, even in a community situation, to perform for families and children.
Bianca Schulze
So, I have to ask, in terms of all of the plays, which one has been the most popular or this kind of depends.
Will Osborne
It kind of depends, probably, of the theater for kids; it’s Dinosaurs Before Dark, which was the first book in the series. And kids are always going to love dinosaurs. We have one musical that we did based on A Good Night for Ghosts, which was the Louis Armstrong story, a Magic Treehouse book, and that’s been very popular. The music for that was composed by Allen Toussaint, who some of your listeners will recognize. He just died a few years ago. He’s a legendary New Orleans composer, and we were just blessed to have him for this particular style of music. It was just great. And then, we have a hip-hop musical based on showtime with Shakespeare, which is called Showtime with Shakespeare. It’s based on stage fright on a summer night, which is the magic Triage title. And that was really fun. That was an idea that Randy came up with Randy Courts, our composer friend. What happens if you take Shakespearean language and adapt it to a hip-hop beat and take a Shakespearean. In this case, it’s a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and try to tell that story in the context of the play with hip hop music. And then our most recent one, which I think we’re very proud of, is a book based on a big day for baseball, which is the story of Jackie Robinson’s first day in the major leagues in 1947. And the music for that mixes period music, like big band swing, a little bit of gospel, and it’s just a wonderful story. It premiered in Orlando, Florida, Orlando Shakespeare Theater last year. And Randy and I flew down to see it and couldn’t have been. Actually, it wasn’t Randy; it was our business manager, Cindy Mill, who flew down to see it and just couldn’t have been more pleased. And so that one’s now available for licensing to other theaters.
Mary Pope Osborne
There’s a great Christmas show called A Ghost Tale from Mr. Dickens in which Jack and Annie—my characters—give Charles Dickens the idea for a Christmas carol, and they kind of act out Dickens’s own past, present, and future. And it’s done with violin music. And it’s just a wonderful pre-Christmas show before children really know about the Christmas carol, and they go well together.
Will Osborne
And the great thing about Randy is that as a composer, he finds a sound that’s appropriate to the period for every single show, the whole feeling of the show. So, there was sort of a Victorian feel to the music. In the Dickens show, hip-hop was a step away; although there’s quite a bit of Elizabethan, there are harpsichords and stuff that lead us into hip-hop. And then, like I said, for Jackie Robinson, it’s all period music.
Mary Pope Osborne
Music from the pirates’ musical is a very Caribbean music, with different creatures on the beach and getting ready to be captured by the pirates.
Will Osborne
Sea shanties, songs about parrots and sharks.
Mary Pope Osborne
I think they have a good time in the same way I do of visiting these other worlds. And then you just live in that world completely before you move on to another one.
Bianca Schulze
Yeah, I love that you’ve brought it to life just like if you see a picture book and you’ve got the text, and then the illustrations bring it to life, and then the stage is just that whole next thing, the whole sensory experience of the music and the lighting and, I mean, just magical.
Mary Pope Osborne
One thing it’s beautiful to see little kids performing. And for a lot of them, this will be their one chance in the world because maybe they’re not greatly talented, but it totally doesn’t matter. They’re on stage, whether they’re being a pirate or a crab, whatever they’re being, they feel validated and creative, and their parents are in the audience. And we think it’s the perfect step toward the literacy component that we’re so eager to get going with kids with the books. And it seems that theater and book reading are very interrelated because of the imagination and you have to read to learn your lines, and you get into the words, so they’re good companions for each other.
Will Osborne
I was going to say we love watching kids watching this shows come to life on stage.
Mary Pope Osborne
Kid audiences are so respectful as they watch other kids. You could hear a pin drop, and.
Will Osborne
Then they clap and scream at all the right places.
Bianca Schulze
I love it. All the right places is important. Mary, I’m going to read some words that you’ve shared before. So, quote, live theater stimulates children’s imaginations in ways nothing else can. And when the performance features characters kids know and love from a book, the connections they make are truly magical, unquote. So, what has been the best part of seeing your stories come to life on stage? Is it seeing the kid’s reaction? Is it being able to foster this greater love of literacy skills? What is it for you that has been the best part of seeing them come to life?
Mary Pope Osborne
Well, one wonderful part of it is the ensemble work of a group, so all the kids are respectful, not only in the audience but on the stage with each other. And there’s a discipline to that, and there’s a discipline to learning to read. And when you apply yourself to the arts, you’re moving beyond where you were. You grow. And so, you see children on the stage just becoming older, becoming more serious, becoming more adventurous, the same way you do when a child starts reading a whole book. And so, it’s something very subtle, but it’s very important for development. And I don’t mean that as an educator because I really don’t have that background. I’m strictly in the arts. And that’s why I feel that I have a passion that hopefully is not, to quote, educational. It’s meant to just envelop the child with joy and not with any sense of that. They have to do it as an assignment. It’s for the sake of play, which is really important and which children don’t get enough of. Now, I don’t think the way we did outside and alone, where you get to invent reality.
Will Osborne
It’s a cliche in theater to ask, why do you think they call it a play? Yeah, because it’s play at its best. Theater is play—full of joy.
Bianca Schulze
Also, for me, I think we talk a lot about—with reading books—that it offers experiences. It opens up discussions on topics that maybe you haven’t heard of before. It can teach you about history and past and lessons. We can learn from mistakes and all of that. And I feel as though it can help us process emotions. As somebody who did experience some theater classes and acting classes as a kid, too, I think what stage and theater and acting brings to that next level is in the books. Or if you’re reading a script, you’re maybe touching it and opening up on discussions and thinking about it. When you’re actually doing the play, and you’re playing with it, you’re getting that opportunity to play with emotions and experience the motions, maybe on a more physical level than internally. So, I love the two working together and kids getting to read the books and hopefully getting to step into those characters and actually live those characters, even if it’s for 30 minutes or an hour.
Mary Pope Osborne
Yeah, that’s our dream. I’d say that’s perfect.
Bianca Schulze
So, I have to imagine that creating such a successful brand that it has taken a village. So, you’ve touched on a few of your collaborators, but I would love it if you would talk about some Magic Treehouse team members and what they have helped bring to the Magic Treehouse brand and to its success now.
Mary Pope Osborne
Well, I started out with a wonderful team at Random House: a wonderful editor, Mallory Loehr, and art director and artist, Sal Murdocca. We were a team for a solid 20 to 25 years, but then Will came up with the idea, before the plays, of doing nonfiction books that are companions to the fiction so kids could learn more about all these places Jack and Annie go. So, he became a major player in the team, and he wrote eight of those. And then he left to create a Magic Treehouse planetarium show for the University of North Carolina. And my sister joined the team, and she wrote another 30 to o 40 of the nonfiction books and some activity books. And then Randy Courts and Jenny Laird, a married couple, came aboard, our two closest friends to work with Will on the musicals. So, they’re part of the team, and we have a wonderful person who manages all of these components, and Cindy Mill, who’s our general manager. And there just seems to be a team that never. Nobody’s driven by an ego. The thing is, the treehouse world is all we care about, so we’re all eager to have input into that and to adjust that. But at the same time, everyone stays in their own lanes. So, everybody has their project that they are feeling proud about.
Will Osborne
I know Jenny is doing the graphic—
Mary Pope Osborne
Oh, yes. And Jenny is now adapting my books into graphic novels with a wonderful team of twin sisters who live in Washington state and Kelly and Nicole Matthews. And they have created great, wonderful art of that. And another artist has come aboard for the series.
Bianca Schulze
Is it Ag Ford?
Mary Pope Osborne
Yes, it is.
Bianca Schulze
I love AG Ford’s artwork. Yeah.
Mary Pope Osborne
He’s wonderful. My agent has been the same forever, Gail Hochman. And now I have a new editor, Jenna Lettice, who was Mallory Loehr’s assistant for many years. So, we have this. It’s a few movable parts, but basically, the whole train has been running on the same track for over 31 years, and it’s going to keep running for a while.
Bianca Schulze
That’s fantastic. I think, too, what you said is that collaboration is also knowing that you all stay in your lane. You all know, and I think that part of expanding and growing is knowing our own limitations and when it’s great to share ideas and to expand and know what everybody’s strengths are. And so, I love that you have that. And that’s obviously aided in the success of Magic Treehouse World.
Mary Pope Osborne
Yeah, I think so. There’s an old storyteller adage I read years and years ago, and I certainly use it with the writing team and, I mean, the musical team and the graphics is take my story and make it better. And I’ve been so amazingly blessed to have people do that. So, I don’t feel like anything’s ever gone astray. And it’s probably why we haven’t done film and television and a lot of media because we like doing this ourselves. And until we really get to be a big part of that world, we wouldn’t do it, I don’t think.
Bianca Schulze
Well, I’m going to read a quote that I don’t know. It was either Mary or Will. You shared it with me via email ahead of our conversation. And it’s from the Christmas in Camelot musical adaptation. After Jack thanks Annie for rescuing him from being trapped forever in a Celtic fairy dance. She says that’s okay. You’ve rescued me lots of times. And besides, none of this would be much fun if we were doing it by ourselves. So, after I read that quote, I wondered if it resonates with you because it’s how you feel about working together.
Mary Pope Osborne
Oh, indeed.
Will Osborne
Absolutely.
Mary Pope Osborne
Will had t-shirts made for the entire cast and crew of the big musical we put on the road of Christmas in Camelot. And all the t-shirts said none of this would be any fun if we were doing it by ourselves. So, it’s been our theme, I think, and it’s attracted really wonderful people to the team.
Bianca Schulze
So, Mary, I understand that you have an amazing classroom program, and I just think that any teachers listening, any parents that could forward this along to the teachers of their children, I think they need to know about it. Will you share a little bit about it?
Mary Pope Osborne
Mary Pope Osborne
Will had t-shirts made for the entire cast and crew of the big musical we put on the road of Christmas in Camelot. And all the t-shirts said none of this would be any fun if we were doing it by ourselves. So, it’s been our theme, I think, and it’s attracted really wonderful people to the team.
Bianca Schulze
I love it. All right, well, before we go, I’m going to ask you each this question, and I’m going to start with you, Will. What is the most important point that you would like the Growing Readers listeners to take away from our conversation today? And feel free to make an awkward pause. That is totally fine.
Will Osborne
I would say. Don’t be afraid to try something new working with kids. In theater, everybody talks about stage fright, and there’s a performance energy and a joy in performing that can completely obliterate stage fright once you’re there and doing it. So, if you have the opportunity to participate in some theatrical endeavor, say yes before you even think about it, and then just dive in with both feet and just do it with joy and commitment and a feeling for your collaborators, whether they’re the director or your fellow performers, and just let yourself have a ball.
Bianca Schulze
Mary, how about you?
Mary Pope Osborne
One important thing, I think, that I always emphasize to kids—to all ages—is to do the work. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, practice, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. But don’t lose a sense of fun. And always remember that creating art is fun. It’s play, as Will said earlier. And if you lose that sense of fun and play, step back, take a pause, take a break. Don’t make it dreadful or horrible for yourself. Make it joyful, but do the work. It’s a combination of discipline and absolutely letting go and being happy.
Bianca Schulze
I love those answers. Well, Will and Mary, thank you so much for spending time with me and spending time with our listeners today. I think just as a parent, not even as I would call myself a literacy advocate, but just as a parent, thank you for creating art in your books, in your plays, and just in a way that is fun and accessible and just encourages our kids to love learning and love playing, as you said. So, thank you.
Mary Pope Osborne
Thank you very much, Bianca. It was nice to meet you.
Will Osborne
Yeah. And I would encourage anybody, even if they’re not a producer or director or even particularly interested in theater, to check out the website because it’s so much fun. It’s colorful. There are pictures from all the shows. There are song samples from all the shows. And if you’re a Magic Treehouse fan in particular, just wander through the website. There’s a lot to see. And you can really have a good time, I think.
Bianca Schulze
Absolutely. And that link is going to be in our show notes, too. So, anybody listening can just toggle into those show notes and click right over. So, thanks for sharing that, Will.
Mary Pope Osborne
Thank you.
Will Osborne
Thank you.
Show Notes
Resources:
Visit the Magic Tree House: On Stage website at www.MTHOnStage.com, or find them on Facebook at @MagicTreeHouseOnStage or on Instagram at @mthonstage.
Mary Pope Osborne’s Classroom Adventures Program
Mary’s literacy program, Classroom Adventures, is a companion to the MTH theatrical productions that provides free downloadable resources for teachers to use in their classrooms as a complement to seeing an MTH show live. Program resources include downloadable Lesson Plans, a Curriculum Key that classifies every MTH book and nonfiction Fact Tracker with regard to subjects and core curriculum standards, and a Reading Levels Guide for all books in the series.
Through Mary’s “Gift of Books” program, a division of Classroom Adventures that provides free books to underprivileged students in Title I schools, book giveaways are often granted in coordination with local productions of a MTH show so that children are able to watch the books they read come alive on stage and make the valuable connection between literacy and the arts. Gift of Books also provides an opportunity for Title 1 teachers to receive grants to acquire MTH books for their classrooms free of charge. Through Classroom Adventures and Gift of Books, Mary’s personal contributions have put over 1,200,000 books into the hands of children in need.
Thank you for listening to the Growing Readers Podcast episode: Mary Pope Osborne and Will Osborne on the Magic Tree House On Stage. For the latest episodes from The Growing Readers Podcast, Subscribe or Follow Now.
