History Literature / TheMagicTreehouse

* TheCretaceousIsAlwaysDoomed: Justified, since the eponymous treehouse is attuned to travel to important historical events (which tends to include certain disasters). Most notably, Jack and Annie end up in Pompeii as Mt. Vesuvius erupts, on the RMS Titanic, and in San Francisco in time for the 1906 earthquake. (Ironically, the one time they do go to the Cretaceous period, there's no asteroid in sight.)

* HaveWeMetBefore: In ''To the Future, Ben Franklin!'', George Washington asks if he has met Jack and Annie before, which he has back in ''Revolutionary War on Sunday''. Of course, he dismisses it because it's been more than a decade since he's seen the kids last.

* DoubleMeaningTitle: ''Abe Lincoln at Last!'' represents how the series is finally tackling the subject of Abraham Lincoln and also because Jack and Annie go through Abe's youngest son Willie, then a young boy named Sam, before ''finally'' getting a talk with President Lincoln himself, meaning they talk to Lincoln at the very end.

** UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington -- ''Revolutionary War On Wednesday''

* RapePillageAndBurn: ''Viking Ships At Sunrise'' has Jack and Annie narrowly escape a Viking raid. No violence is shown onscreen, but the Vikings clearly intend to do some raiding and sacking.

* ContinuityNod: ''To the Future Ben Franklin!'' explicitly references Jack and Annie meeting George Washington in ''Revolutionary War on Wednesday'', with Washington even commenting that the two remind him of two children he met during the war.

** In ''Blizzard of the Blue Moon'', Jack and Annie need to call out the name of a unicorn known as 'Divine Flower of Rome'. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, the poem didn't state that the two had to say his name in ''Latin'' -- which is Dianthus -- and thus gets them into a bit of trouble later on.]]

** In ''Leprechaun in Late Winter'', Jack improvises a song that ends where the fairies and leprechauns take a lonely girl to the land of the Shee. Said girl happens to be ''Lady Gregory'', whom Jack and Annie are supposed to inspire to write her poetry. Annie explains to Jack that he screwed up on that one.

* FieldTripToThePast: The earlier books are almost all like this.

* PandaingToTheAudience: ''Perfect Time For Pandas''.

** The first Special Edition book, ''Danger in the Darkest Hour'', takes place during World War II where they must save Kathleen during the Blitz and a sequence where Jack is in charge of driving a van filled with Jewish kids across a ''Nazi-controled outpost''..
** The movie makes ''Vacation Under the Volcano'' even ''darker'' by making Jack go through PTSD over nearly losing Annie and seeing many people die from the eruption.

** In ''Abe Lincoln at Last'', Jack and Annie befriend President Lincoln's young son Willie. When they return, they find out that he [[spoiler:died of typhoid fever a year later.]]

* {{Costumer}}: In most adventures, after Jack and Annie finished warping, they find themselves in appropriate clothing of the time. When they went to ancient Rome, they wore togas. When they went to the North Pole, they had fur coats. And so on.

** The first Special Edition book, ''Danger in the Darkest Hour'', takes place during World War II where they must save Kathleen during the Blitz.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Jack and Annie frequently go barefoot during their adventures, most notably during ''Dolphins at Daybreak'', ''High Tide in Hawaii'', ''Summer of the Sea Serpent'', ''Dark Day in the Deep Sea'', ''A Good Night for Ghosts''', and ''Soccer on Sunday''.