Hello everyone, and I’m back at it again with a new book series ranking post. In my last such post, I ranked the next ten Diary of a Wimpy Kid books in my own personal order of worst to best. Now, it’s time for me to head back to the Magic Tree House book series. Remember when I ranked the top ten best books in the original series? And remember when I said in that post that the Merlin Missions series deserves its own list? Well, I decided that it is now time to rank the top ten best books in that series.
Older fans are familiar with how the Merlin Missions series was initially ordered sequentially, with Christmas in Camelot originally being the 29th book. After the release of Night of the Ninth Dragon in 2016, Mary Pope Osborne started writing new books to the original series that I will refer to as the “add-ons”, beginning with A Big Day for Baseball in 2017. But with the release of the add-ons, the Merlin Missions books had to be separated into their own distinct series and re-numbered, with Christmas in Camelot now known as Merlin Missions #1. That was an interesting new direction to take the series after ending Merlin Missions, even if older fans like me will forever separate the first 28 books from the add-ons and forever remember the original numbering of the Merlin Missions books. If you’re a newer fan and didn’t already know this, I’m glad to teach you something today.
As with the Merlin Missions series, the add-ons deserve their own list, and like my last Magic Tree House book ranking post, I’m going to leave them out for the same two reasons. Osborne is not yet done writing the add-ons, so they cannot be fairly judged in their entirety yet. And even if she was done writing the add-ons, I have yet to catch up on them, which would add to the unfairness. I have also decided to leave out the Super Edition book World at War, 1944 (originally titled Danger in the Darkest Hour), since it is not considered part of the Merlin Missions series. I’ll bet it’s really good though, and it would nonetheless be interesting to see where it would rank in this list once I get around to it.
But even without the add-ons and Danger in the Darkest Hour, thanks to the sheer size of the series as a whole, an honorable mentions list will be possible this time. And while it won’t be long, I’d just like to make it clear that all the books in the Merlin Missions series are pretty much great, being even better than the original series. I think that’s partly due to the fact that the Merlin Missions books are geared towards slightly older readers, which allows for more mature themes. I was just searching for the absolute best, so it was a rather tough list to make in general. For this list, it was tempting to use the original covers, but I decided to use the re-numbered covers to keep things concise and familiar for newer fans. And of course, before I begin, I would like to give a heads up to some minor spoilers to the books as usual.
With that being said, it’s time to pick up those books, point to a place and wish to go there!
