Mary Pope Osborne

Mary Pope Osborne (born May 20, 1949, in Fort Sill, Oklahoma) is an American author best known for creating the Magic Tree House series of chapter books for children, which has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and includes titles such as Afternoon on the Amazon Graphic Novel (Magic Tree House) and A Big Day for Baseball. She has written over 100 books for children and young adults across genres including picture books, realistic and historical fiction, nonfiction, biographies, mysteries, and retellings of mythology and folklore.

Osborne grew up in a military family that moved frequently, living in multiple U.S. states and abroad before she was fifteen. Her writing career began with the young adult novel Run, Run As Fast As You Can in the early 1980s. In addition to the main Magic Tree House series, she is co-author of the companion Magic Tree House Fact Trackers with her husband, Will Osborne, and her sister, Natalie Pope Boyce. A former president of the Authors Guild in the 1990s and an active advocate for children’s literacy, she lives in Connecticut and has supported initiatives that place Magic Tree House books into the hands of underserved children.