To the Future, Ben Franklin!

Mary Pope Osborne's To the Future, Ben Franklin is a Magic Tree House adventure for 9 year olds in which Jack and Annie take a famous old man somewhere he never imagined.

What happens

It's a boiling summer afternoon in Frog Creek. Annie swears she saw lightning with no clouds in the sky. Jack doesn't believe her, until he finds her at the bottom of the rope ladder.

Morgan's note sends them to Old Philadelphia to help a mysterious Doctor Ben make up his mind about a paper. The rhyme even tells them how to get his attention. Say they're from the press.

It's 1787, and Doctor Ben turns out to be Benjamin Franklin. He's eighty-one, sweating through a heatwave and meeting in secret to write the Constitution. So when two children tell him they're reporters, he panics!

Once that's sorted out, he's lovely company. He shows them the library he started and reels off everything he's ever done. The list goes on for ages. Annie's reply is perfect ("Is that all?").

But there's a problem. The men can't agree on anything, and Ben has almost lost hope. He tells them he doesn't plan to sign.

So Jack and Annie do something they've never done before. They bring him home to their own time.

This is where it gets really fun. A man who pulled electricity out of a storm is terrified of a car. He thinks the power lines are very tall washing lines. When a small plane goes over, he shouts "Run for your lives!" and hides in the woods. It's funny and quite touching too, because he starts to feel his ideas don't matter any more.

Can Jack and Annie find something in Frog Creek that shows him they do?

The history is very American. Your reader doesn't need to know who Ben Franklin was, though. The book explains as it goes, and there's a short section of real facts about him at the end. (Grown-ups reading along might learn a thing or two as well.)

This is a later Magic Tree House book, and it mentions earlier trips, but it doesn't rely on them.

What to read next

If they'd like to see the snowy night George Washington remembers when he meets Jack and Annie again here, Revolutionary War on Wednesday is the adventure where it happens.