Kelvin's Magic Wings: A Symbol of Human Ingenuity

Kelvin's Magic Wings is a captivating fantasy novel written by author Sarah Miller. The story revolves around a young boy named Kelvin who discovers a pair of magical wings that grant him the ability to fly. As Kelvin navigates his newfound powers, he embarks on a series of thrilling adventures and encounters fantastical creatures in a hidden world. The protagonist, Kelvin, is an ordinary boy living a mundane life until he stumbles upon the wings in his grandfather's attic. Intrigued by their shimmering emerald color and extraordinary design, Kelvin decides to try them on. To his astonishment, the wings attach seamlessly to his back, and he soon realizes they possess extraordinary abilities.

To his astonishment, the wings attach seamlessly to his back, and he soon realizes they possess extraordinary abilities. With his new ability to fly, Kelvin ventures into previously unexplored territories, soaring above breathtaking landscapes and encountering mythical creatures like fire-breathing dragons, talking animals, and mischievous fairies. Each encounter presents Kelvin with challenges and opportunities to learn valuable life lessons about courage, friendship, and resilience.

Craft Knife

Dishes are in the dishwasher, laundry is in the washing machine, dinner is on the stove, one kid is playing LEGOs while the other kid reads on the couch, and the house that Matt painstakingly straightened while we were gone is trashed, trashed, TRASHED.

We must be home again!

We left a few projects in the lurch for our trip--our bat house, the thankful tree, the Disaster Dioramas of Pompeii and the Titanic, a whole slew of Spanish flashcards--and every now and then, as the kids decompress and I continue my manic run through the holiday craft fair season, we're picking them all back up again.

For instance, we finally finished a project that we've been working on for a while--putting all the Magic Tree House books in their proper spot on our huge basement timeline. Because the kids listen to the Magic Tree House audiobooks over and over again, they've gained quite a bit of historical and geographical knowledge, but it can be tough putting that into a wider context, and wider contexts is what I am all about.

• #1 Dinosaur Before Dark--Cretaceous period
• #2 The Knight at Dawn--Middle Ages
• #3 Mummies in the Morning--2630 BCE to 2250 BCE
• #4 Pirates Past Noon--1690-1730
• #5 Night of the Ninjas--1336-1600
• #7 Sunset of the Sabertooth--Late Pleistocene period
• #8 Midnight on the Moon--2036
• #10 Ghost Town at Sundown--1850-1900
• #13 Vacation under the Volcano--79 CE
• #14 Day of the Dragon King--first century
• #15 Viking Ships at Sunrise--9th century
• #16 Hour of the Olympics--776 BCE-393 CE
• #17 Tonight on the Titanic--1912
• #18 Buffalo before Breakfast--1850-1900
• #21 Civil War on Sunday--1861-1865
• #22 Revolutionary War on Wednesday--12/25/1776
• #23 Twister on Tuesday--1870s
• #24 Earthquake in the Early Morning--1906
• #25 Stage Fright on a Summer Night--1558-1603
• #27 Thanksgiving on Thursday--1621
• #28 High Tide in Hawaii--11th century-1777
• #29 A Big Day for Baseball--1947
• #30 Hurricane Heroes in Texas--1930
• #31 Warriors in Winter--100s CE
• #32 To the Future, Ben Franklin!--1787
• #33 Narwhal on a Sunny Night--975-990
• #34 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #6) Season of the Sandstorms--prior to the 8th century
• #34 Late Lunch with Llamas--15th century
• #35 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #7) Night of the New Magicians--1889
• #35 Camp Time in California--1903
• #36 (old numbering--now it's Merlin Mission #8) Blizzard of the Blue Moon--1938
• #37 Dragon of the Red Dawn--1185-1603
• #38 Monday with a Mad Genius--around 1500
• #39 Dark Day in the Deep Sea--1870s
• #41 Moonlight of the Magic Flute--1760
• #42 A Good Night for Ghosts--1916
• #43 Leprechaun in Late Winter--1860
• Merlin Mission #17 A Crazy Day with Cobras--1500-1600
• Merlin Mission #18 Dogs in the Dead of Night--1600s
• Merlin Mission #19 Abe Lincoln at Last--1861
• Merlin Mission #20 A Perfect Time for Pandas--2008
• Merlin Mission #21 Stallion by Starlight--340 BCE
• Merlin Mission #22 Hurry Up, Houdini!--1915
• Merlin Mission #23 High Time for Heroes--1849-1850
• Merlin Mission #24 Soccer on Sunday--1970
• Merlin Mission #25--Shadow of the Shark--before 1511
• Merlin Mission #26 Balto of the Blue Dawn--1925

Sydney helped me cut out all the book cover thumbnails, then Willow glued them onto the wall as I showed her where each one went. She coated each in an extra layer of glitter glue, just because, and then I went back and wrote in the timeline info:

I had no idea, until we actually started placing them, how many books Mary Pope Osborne had set in the latter half of the nineteenth century or so. If we ever move and thus need to do our timeline over again, remind me to set aside more room here just for her.

For a while the girls listened to this book over and over and over again--I think they found the part with the ghost thrilling:

I was going to encourage them to listen to Thanksgiving on Thursday, but I don't seem to have ripped the audio copy from a library CD yet. Fortunately, we own a paperback copy of the book, so perhaps we'll find time to read it out loud together today.

Interspersed with making Pilgrim paper dolls and the thankful tree and the dinner roll dough to freeze for Thursday, that is.

16 comments:

That is such a fantastic idea! My almost 5yo loves the audio books also, she will listen to them over and over. I love the idea of the time line. Mind if I use your hard work and print out the list?

Goodness, please do--that's why I published it!

For the wider time ranges, I just had Will glue the book cover anywhere within that time range. In the books themselves, however, one of the characters often gives a more specific date for when they really are. I didn't have the books in front of me, though, so I gleaned all my dates through research.

What a fabulous idea. As a timeline addict, I love how you took something they are interested in reading/listening to and then giving them a space in time and allowing them to see how different historical events take place at similar times.

I still have vivid memories in my mind of my childhood timeline. When I hear a date, I immediately go to the timeline in my head to get historical context on what I'm learning about! :)

When we were on vacation, I also bought lots of postcards of stuff-the discovery of Pluto, the formation of the Grand Canyon, etc.--and one of our super-many projects this week is to get all of those nice and settled on our timeline.

Did you read the books in published order, then place on the timeline? Or have you jumped through in historical order? We have had the books for awhile and read the first few I would love to use these more in studies, just they never seem to line up with holidays, the order is so wonky. It has been hard to plan around. Also do you have a pdf of the thumbnails for share possibly?> thanks so much for the time line post that will be of use for sure.

It's actually so interesting to look back on this post, written over three years ago, because Magic Tree House is STILL part of our lives every week. At this point, we've listened to all of them (audiobooks are still our preferred method for these, since everyone can listen along while playing or working quietly) several times, and the girls still don't seem tired of them!

We have listened to the entire series in published order at least once--most of them while on a really long road trip, and the rest as they're available on audiobook--and once a month, we revisit a particular book again, as Will's online Magic Tree House Club (available through Currclick, if you're interested) also moves through the books in published order.

But yes, we do also re-read the books that relate to a particular subject that we're studying at the time--each one takes about an hour to listen to, so it's not a huge commitment. For instance, we recently listened to *Mummies in the Morning* over lunch, as part of the mummies and pyramids chapter of our Story of the World textbook.

My own philosophy about visiting the books in published order vs. chronological order is that you *could* do them in chronological order, and it is certainly fun to do the Christmas books around Christmas and the Thanksgiving book around Thanksgiving, but Osborne makes no claims to provide a comprehensive history, so the books really aren't a history spine in themselves, and she also writes some books that are in geographical context rather than historical--there's an Australia book, for instance, and a moon book--AND some books are purely fantasy, better for studying Arthurian legend, or the genre of scary stores. There's also the continuity of the books themselves to consider--the books are often sorted into little sets, wherein the kids have a major quest that it takes them three or four books to accomplish, and sometimes new characters are introduced.

Reading the books in published order worked well for us, but mind you, we first read them before we really started a formal history study, and now we mostly read them for fun and enrichment on top of that study, so we've never even attempted to use them AS a formal history study, you know?

I'm trying to remember where I got the thumbnails for the book covers, and I'm 99% sure that it was just a Google Image search--I don't think you'll find it too hard to grab them.

This is great! I was looking up a timeline for the books so we could read them as we study that time period! Thanks!

The librarian in me wants to catalogue and index ALL our things now! Podcasts, Magic School Bus, Horrible Histories--think of how helpful that would be!

I"m so happy to find your list, thanks so much!! We just got into the Magic Treehouse books (we are on book 3) and my teacher brain went right to-----we need a TIMELINE HERE! So tomorrow we will be turning the upstairs hallway into a time line. What the heck, we'll need to paint it anyway in the next few years before we move. Thanks again!

Hey, just thought I would comment here to tell you how often I look at this post! We are making a Magic Tree House timeline, and your dates are so helpful. We are also doing a Magic Tree House world map and US map, so the kids can get a feel for WHERE the books took place as well. Thanks for the inspiration here!

Thanks! I've got to figure out a timeline set-up for our new house so that I have an excuse to update this list.

I DO have a couple of good wall maps, though--maybe it's time for the MTH geography list! Have you put yours online?

Thank you for this! We are almost done listening to the series, and we are doing a map and timeline of the books. On the MTH website there is an intercitve map of where they all took place. Do you have the rest of the books dates? I have found this very helpful!

Ooh, I wish Osborne would put them all into chronological order on her site, too! I haven't written down the dates for any of the later books, but it shouldn't be too difficult of a research project to undertake. Some dates are on the Magic Tree House Wiki--

--but just a quick Googled plot summary usually gives me enough info to pin down a good date for each book.

what about magic treehouses 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, and 35 when does camp time in California take place? I'm talking about the one that isn't merlin missions but was written by mary pope Osborne

Can you add and Magic tree houses 29-35 and add merlin missions 1-27?

For the classic Morgan Le Fay series, I've ordered them (using your info as well as some extra) as:
1 Cretaceous Period,
7 Late Pleistocene Period,
3 ~2600 BCE,
16 ~340 BCE,
14 ~230 BCE,
13 August 24 79AD,
31 172AD,
15 9th century,
33 986,
2 Medieval Europe (Moat around castle suggests after 1154),
5 1336-1600,
34 1450s,
25 1600 (Midsummer's Night Dream just written),
27 1621,
4 1690-1730,
22 Dec 25 1776,
32 1787,
18 1850? (could be a bit earlier),
10 1850s-1900?,
28 early 1800s(could be much earlier though?),
21 1860s,
23 1870s,
35 Founding of Yosemite (but haven't read yet so not totally sure) 1890?,
30 Sept. 8 1900,
24 April 18 1906,
17 April 15 1912,
29 1947,
9 (submarine technology suggests near future. ),
8 Future on the Moon

The books I can't place are 6-Amazon, 11-Africa/Lions, 12-Arctic/Polar Bears (There's a man on a dog sled which suggests it's before the snowmobile era though), 19 India/Tigers (Holy Man in the forest doesn't give any hints), and 20 Australia/Dingos.

And I haven't tried to do the Merlin series yet.

We must be home again!

As Kelvin unravels the mystery behind the wings' origin, he discovers that they were crafted by a legendary sorcerer centuries ago. The wings are said to be imbued with immense power and hold the key to restoring balance to the magical realm. Kelvin's quest to master his flying abilities and unlock the wings' true potential becomes intertwined with his mission to save the enchanted world from an impending evil threat. Throughout the story, Kelvin faces numerous obstacles, including treacherous landscapes, cunning adversaries, and self-doubt. As he overcomes these challenges, Kelvin gradually becomes a more confident and skilled young hero. Along the way, he forms unexpected alliances with a diverse group of characters, forging lifelong friendships and alliances that prove essential in his quest to protect the magical realm. Kelvin's Magic Wings is a captivating tale that blends elements of fantasy, adventure, and self-discovery. Sarah Miller's vivid descriptions and immersive storytelling transport readers to a whimsical world filled with wonder and awe. The novel's underlying messages about bravery, friendship, and the power of self-belief resonate with readers of all ages, reminding them to embrace their unique abilities and pursue their dreams. In conclusion, Kelvin's Magic Wings is a thrilling and enchanting novel that takes readers on a magical journey filled with excitement and wonder. Through its vibrant characters, imaginative settings, and captivating storyline, the book offers a timeless tale of courage and self-discovery that will undoubtedly leave readers eagerly awaiting the next magical adventure..

Reviews for "Kelvin's Magic Wings: The Ultimate Fashion Statement"

1. Alex - 1 star

As an avid fantasy reader, I found "Kelvin's Magic Wings" to be a major disappointment. The plot was incredibly predictable, lacking any originality or surprises. The characters were flat and uninteresting, making it difficult to connect with them or care about their journey. The writing style was also lackluster, failing to bring the magical world to life. Overall, I found the book to be unengaging and tedious, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone seeking an exciting fantasy adventure.

2. Sarah - 2 stars

I had high hopes for "Kelvin's Magic Wings" after reading positive reviews, but sadly, it fell short of my expectations. The pacing was incredibly slow, dragging the story unnecessarily. The descriptions were excessive and often took away from the plot development. The world-building was also poorly executed, lacking the depth and intricacy needed to fully immerse the reader in the fantastical setting. While the concept had potential, the execution left much to be desired, resulting in a tedious and underwhelming read.

3. Jason - 2 stars

"Kelvin's Magic Wings" failed to capture my interest from the start. The writing style felt amateurish, with clunky dialogue and overused cliches. The character development was weak, leaving me feeling indifferent towards their struggles and triumphs. The magical elements of the story were poorly explained, making it hard to suspend disbelief and fully connect with the world. Overall, I found the book to be average at best, lacking the depth and originality I look for in fantasy novels.

The Enchantment of Kelvin's Magic Wings