Mary Pope Osborne (born May 20, 1949) is a children's author who wrote the Magic Tree House book series for children. She has written more than one hundred books for children and teenagers. The Magic Tree House series is illustrated by Sal Murdocca. Mary Pope Osborne grew up in a military family. Her father, William Pope, was a Colonel in the United States Army, and as such his family frequently moved from one military base to another. By the time she was fifteen, Mary had lived in Oklahoma, Austria, Florida and on four different army posts in Virginia and North Carolina. After retiring from the military, Mary's father served as the President of Oak Ridge Military Academy in North Carolina. Osborne attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 1970s and earned a bachelor's degree. She then traveled all over Europe, and spent the first six weeks of her trip living in a cave on the island of Crete. She then joined up with a group of European young people and traveled in rickety vans through sixteen Asian countries, including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal. After returning to the United States, she worked as an acting teacher, waitress, travel agent, window dresser, and medical assistant before deciding to become an author. Her first book, Run, Run, As Fast As You Can, was published in 1982 and is a semi-autobiographical story of a young girl growing up in a military family. Osborne wrote the first book of the popular Magic Tree House series in 1992. First she tried a magic museum idea, but that didn't work. Next she tried a magic artist's studio, and then magic whistles. She tried seven different ideas and wrote seven different drafts before coming up with the magic tree house. It sparked when she and her husband, Will Osborne, were walking through the woods in Pennsylvania and saw an old, dilapidated tree house. Since then the 37 books in the series have sold over 50 million copies. At the end of 2007, there will be 38 released titles. A non-fiction companion series, the Magic Tree House Research Guides, was launched in 2000 by Mary and her husband, Will Osborne. There are now sixteen titles in the seriee, the most recent co-authored by Mary and her sister Natalie Pope Boyce. In addidion, a full-scale musical adaptation, Magic Tree House: The Musical, premiered in September 2007 and is scheduled for a 3-year national tour beginning fall '08. A studio cast album CD of the musical is available from PS Classics. The 39th book is set to be released on March 25, 2008. It is called Dark Day in the Deep Sea. Jack and Annie go back to the time of the first oceanography expeditions and have a wild adventure with a giant octopus, a creature of the seas. She is now the author of many highly acclaimed picture books, early chapter books, middle-grade biographies, and young adult novels. In February 1993, Mary was elected the 27th president of the Authors Guild, the oldest, most established organization for writers in the United States, a position she held for four years. Osborne and her husband, writer Will Osborne, were married in 1976 and live in northwestern Connecticut. They have two Norfolk Terriers, called Joey and Mr. Bezo. Her most recent book, Monday with a Mad Genius, was released on August 28, 2007. It was so popular that Random House ran another printing and this one is on the verge of being sold out.
References
- Mary Pope Osborne. Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2006
