To Jack and Annie (and the Magic Tree House)
I never knocked. You were simply there — quiet and waiting, nestled in the branches of an ordinary tree, holding more wonder than I knew the world could contain.
You were my first companions in adventure. You didn’t wear capes or wield swords, you packed peanut butter sandwiches. And yet, you were brave in a way that changed me. You made courage feel like something a girl like me might already carry.
You took me through time and across oceans, into castles and deserts and stormy seas — all from a pink-walled bedroom on a farm, where the air smelled like soil and the light came early. I was small and curious and far too full of feeling, and you gave me somewhere for all that wonder to go.
There was always something tender in the way you treated the world — the way you looked for clues, for kindness, for meaning. You reminded me that learning was a kind of magic, that books could be both escape and compass. I read your stories beneath blankets, and after playing outside all day when my legs ached but my imagination didn’t.
I didn’t have a tree house of my own, not one that spun or shimmered or whispered riddles. But I had you. And that was more than enough.
You never knew me — but I knew you. And I still do.
Every time I open a book hoping it might carry me somewhere I’ve never been,
I think of you both.
With quiet gratitude,
