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Mary Pope Osborne's Late Lunch with Llamas is a Magic Tree House adventure for 7 year olds with a very small animal to rescue from a very big mountain.
It starts with a condor. Jack is reading about whales on the porch when Annie spots an enormous black-and-white bird circling over the house (and condors definitely don't live in Pennsylvania). They follow it to the tree house, where a travel guide to the Andes is waiting with a rhyme from Morgan.
In Peru they meet Topa, a small barefoot boy who is an orphan, just like his baby llama, Cria. Two royal guards with spears and feathered helmets have taken her. Her coat shines silver and there's nothing like her in the Secret City.
The Secret City sits near the top of Old Mountain. Getting there means a swaying rope bridge over a roaring river, a forest with pit vipers in it and mountain sickness on the way up. Jack says he isn't scared. Annie says he is. (She's right.)
If you've read a few of these together, you'll know how it works. Jack reads a fact out of the guidebook and, a few pages later, that fact saves the day. This time it's an old Inca legend that llamas could once talk. What happens when Annie decides to believe it is a really lovely moment.
There's plenty to learn along the way without it ever feeling like homework. Machu Picchu, the emperor Pachacuti, sixteen fountains and why you should climb slowly when the air is thin all come wrapped up in the story.
The heart of it is the last line of Morgan's rhyme, the secret of brave. Jack spends the whole trip insisting he isn't frightened, and Annie has a very kind answer for him by the end. For a child who worries about wobbly bridges (real or otherwise), it's a nice thing to hear!
There are a few tense moments on a narrow cliff path, with condors circling overhead. It never gets scarier than that.
If they'd like another of Morgan's creature missions, try Narwhal on a Sunny Night. This time the tree house lands in Greenland, and the creature to save is a narwhal.
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