Balto of the Blue Dawn

Mary Pope Osborne's Balto of the Blue Dawn is a Magic Tree House adventure for 7 year olds, set in a howling Alaskan blizzard in 1925.

What happens

Jack and Annie are out on their bikes when Annie spots a flash of light over the woods. The tree house is back, and their friend Teddy has a mission for them. They're needed in the far north, where they can save lives.

They land in Nome, a frozen little town where nearly everything is shut. The school has a quarantine sign on it. At the hospital they meet Oki, whose mum and sister are very ill with diphtheria. The medicine is on its way by dog sled, passed from team to team, but a huge storm is coming and the mayor has ordered the last musher to wait.

So Jack and Annie use Morgan's gold dust to become champion mushers for twelve hours, and they set off into the night with eight huskies. Jack's glasses ice over. He falls through thin ice and nearly gets frostbite. They shelter with Ed, a kind old musher who feeds them tomato soup and tells them about the great lead dogs, Togo and Balto.

It's exciting and cosy all at once. You can almost hear the bells on the dogs' collars! Annie's way with the huskies is gorgeous, and there are lots of real musher words to shout out loud (gee, haw and hike). Jack and Annie even remember seeing Balto's statue in Central Park in New York.

Is it worth a word of warning? A little. The illness is serious. The mayor says five people have already died, and Oki's uncle lost his wife and children in a flu epidemic years before (that's backstory, told in one sad moment). A child who worries about people getting ill might want to talk it through afterwards.

But mostly this is a story about brave dogs, kind strangers and doing the right thing without needing the credit. There's even a pinch of stardust so nobody remembers the children were there.

What to read next

If your reader fell for the huskies, Dogs in the Dead of Night takes Jack and Annie to the snowy Alps, where huge rescue dogs dig Jack out of an avalanche.