So recently a friend of mine made the mistake of informing me that Magic Tree House was a thing. Like, one the best-selling chapter book series of all time kind of a thing. Sixty-six books not counting supplement books and graphic novels kind of a thing. So of course I’m gonna read them all.

For the sake of my image gallery, we’ll be sticking to the main series and save Merlin Missions for a later time maybe. I’m only on book twenty right now, so I can’t give a full Series Spotlight yet, but I sure can talk about the cover arts.

They’re really interesting.

Travelling Through Time

Last time, in my Judy Moody Cover Story post, I talked about the differences in cover art over long periods of time. Magic Tree House has been in print since 1992, much longer than Judy. Surely the cover arts have changed a lot, right?

Not really.

This is book one. The 1992, 2012 and the 2021 versions. All art by Sal Murdocca. All published by Random House. Basically no changes, at least compared to Judy. The art got brighter, more colorful, and more eye-catching over the years, but mostly the graphic design changed a lot. The header is always a tree, but the series font changes quite a bit. The title font changes a lot. Lot of UI updates.

(Let’s ignore this deluxe full color edition art by Antonio Javier Caparo for the sake of argument, thanks.)

Book two. Little different. New art in the early 2000s. Knight changed position, but still basically the same pose across the board.

Okay, wait. This is getting different. Same “looking at sarcophagus” pose, but we don’t see the mummy in the newer editions. That’s probably just a hiccup due to the material. Maybe Random House thought the old art was too scary. Or less of a cliffhanger.

Yeah hiccup for sure. Back to normal.

A.G. Ford has been the new series artist since 2016, but their style is very reminiscent of Murdocca’s. You probably wouldn’t have even known the artist changed if I didn’t point it out.

Where you might notice a big difference is across international editions.

Flying Through Space

I present the English, English Kindle, Romanian, French, German, and Japanese editions of book one!
Now we’re getting somewhere!
You’ll notice immediately that every version besides the Romanian cover, feature completely new artists. Most have drawn basically the same scene, with minor differences. The Japanese edition is probably the most different, next to the English Kindle edition.
The headers are mostly the same, and most have a cute little version of the tree house. The German one is even spinning. Way to stick to the source material, except for the Annie’s hair part.
Jack and Annie’s expressions can be pretty different depending on the cover art. In the book, Jack is excited to ride the Pterodactyl to escape the T-Rex. This only really comes across in half the editions.

Let’s look at book two:

A similar situation to book one. Newer books in the series also follow these art styles, just with the newer headers we saw in the English editions earlier. Where’s the Japanese edition? It was actually grouped with book one, so there’s no new cover art there.

I guess a lot of regions thought mummies were scary.

Japanese editions are looking the most different so far. Let’s check out more of those.

A Faraway Place

So Magic Tree House is really popular in Japan. Like had an anime movie and a ton of exclusive limited goods type of popular. All the art in the books is unique to the Japanese edition type of popular.

A lot of the earlier books were combined, like books one and two were, so you won’t see everything here. I’ll mostly be showing the covers with the most dramatic changes. A few of the covers are pretty similar to the originals, as you saw above.

Hold on, it’s gonna be a wild ride.

So because of those combined editions, the numbering is very off. Get used to that.
The titles are too! The Japanese name of Dolphins at Daybreak translates to SOS! Undersea Exploration. Makes sense that the English naming scheme of [thing/place] at [time period] wouldn’t localize very well.
Media Factory decided to focus on a more exciting scene in the book, at least for a Japanese audience.

A similar story here. More exciting scene choice (though a bit exaggerated), more exciting title (Desperate Crossing of the Savannah).

A lot of the stories in Magic Tree House cover the more tragic historical events, like the Titanic here. Good to see it’s still treated with respect in other editions.
Also their clothes are very different!

Okay, so mostly respect most of the time. Parachuting is probably pretty exciting, for what that’s worth!
Magic Tree House Super Edition (formerly Danger in the Darkest Hour) covers World War 2. The Japanese title is Night of World War 2.

Some books cover very American events. A Singing Voice Echoes on the Battlefield makes sure you know that the Civil War is a very American event.

Back to the excitement in Hawaii, Legendary Tsunami! I think this is one of my favorite Japanese covers. Really cool angle.

Okay, maybe just one Merlin Mission book. I don’t know what happens here yet, but one of these looks way more interesting.

Here’s a few of those original arts I mentioned at the start. A lot of work goes into these localizations!

The Way Home

There’s a lot more I didn’t show here, so if you liked what you saw, check out more! There’s a whole world of Magic Tree House covers to explore. I’ll cover what actually happens past the covers on the next post!