Back when my son was young, it was hard to find books that interested him. With him being on the autism spectrum, it was a challenge to find books that interested him.  We’d been through the Captain Underpants collection, something he read several times.  After a few less-than-successful attempts, Mom hit a home run when I brought home the first book in the Magic Tree House series titled Dinosaurs Before Dark.

This book tells the story of a brother and sister who are walking in the woods near their home.  Jack is eight and Annie is seven.  Just when they are thinking of turning back home, Annie discovers a tree house they’ve never come across before.  Jack is reluctant, but Annie plunges ahead and climbs the ladder.  Inside the tree house are books – old books and new books.  Many still have bookmarks in them as if the reader stopped reading and is coming back.

Jack opens a book about dinosaurs and wishes he could see a Pteranodon (flying dinosaur) for real.   Suddenly one appears by the tree house.  This startles the two of them, but not as much as what happens next.  The tree house starts spinning and when it stops, they find themselves still in a tree, but now there are dinosaurs nearby.

Dinosaurs Before Dark is a pretty easy read, but it’s a good book for young readers.  The story is interesting and has some suspense as Jack and Annie do some exploring, but also want to get back home.  All of the dinosaurs they meet aren’t “nice”  as there is an encounter with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.  It creates a bit of mild peril in the book, but for the most part, the story isn’t all that frightening.

There’s not much character development of Jack and Annie.  I imagine as time goes on kids get to learn more about them.  For now, it’s enough to know that Jack seems to be the older brother who’s pretty smart and cautious most of the time.  Annie is somewhat annoying to him, but she is also an adventurous one.  That is, until the end of the book when Jack finally seems to embrace his own sense of adventure.

My son read this easily.  He’s nine and a bit lower than his current grade level.  Still, he was able to tell me what was going on in the story with ease and go through the book in just one afternoon reading session.  The names of the dinosaurs are about the only thing that gave him any difficulty.

There is also plenty of suspense here to keep readers interested in future books.  Many things are not explained.  Jack finds a medallion with an M on it.  The tree house seems to be magical when Jack wishes for something from the book, and with all the books they found that could lead to a whole host of new adventures.

It’s also a short enough book that a parent can read it to their child It’s ten short chapters and a total of 68 pages, but the print is very large.  I read it in the bookstore prior to purchasing it, so I would say it took about ten minutes the first time I read it.  Reading a few chapters a night at bedtime with your child would be fun.

Dinosaurs Before Dark probably could have been longer with more time spent in the world of the dinosaurs, but it was the perfect size for my son and got him interested in the whole series.  Once he was hooked on the series, we would go to the bookstore together and he picked out the books in the series that interested him, so we didn’t read the series in order.  The main thing, though, is that it piqued his interest in reading and it kept his attention which can be a difficult thing with a child on the autism spectrum.