Magic Tree House: Monday with a Mad Genius and Dark Day in the Deep Sea

Magic Tree House Monday with a Mad Genius and Dark Day in the Deep Sea

The kids help Leonardo da Vinci fly and retain his faith in his work. In the second book, they save an Octopus that saved them. That magic wand comes in handy. This historical fiction approach feels a bit too sanitized, but works for kids.

Leonardo da Vinci

I had always thought of da Vinci as a scientist who occasionally dabbled in artwork. In Isaacson's biography, however, he is presented primarily as an artist. (I guess that goes better with his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle companions. In the book he is portrayed as a gay eccentric who has sufficient gifts to allow him to run in elite social circles and get away with eccentric behavior. He loved to tinker and dream. However, he often did not finish his work. (That may be how he gets his reputation. In retrospect, it looks like his ideas were the base of modern inventions. However, that assumes he would have continued down what we now see as the obvious path, which was not so obvious back then.