Yet another blast from the past for me: Hour of the Olympics by Mary Pope Osborne is a sweet, middle grade read.

This historical series makes learning fun and interesting in a fictional way. Don't enjoy non-fiction books but still want to learn? This series can help your middle grade readers! This book does focus on girls and women in Greece and how they weren't allowed many options to learn or participate in events. I think this is an interesting way to bring this up to young readers.

I wouldn't recommend jumping in with this book. It's not the best story out of all of the ones I've read so far but it is good as part of a series.

Overall, this is a good middle grade book!

Two out of five stars.

Little girl loved this one!

I liked hour of the Olympic

i read this aloud to someone, no shame

Is this a children’s book? Yes. Have I read this book over 15 times? Yes. Will I stop loving this book? Probably not.

This is my favorite magic treehouse book. Without a doubt. Rereading it over and over again is always a pleasure.

Hour of the Olympics is the sixteenth Magic Tree House book and the final of the lost stories arc. In this one Jack and Annie travel back in time to Greece to watch the Olympic games. Annie ends up in danger because women and girls weren't allowed to the games.

In school I read about a half dozen books on the ancient Olympics. Every four years when the Olympics were being played the history of the games were assigned reading. I can't remember a single one covering the banning of women from watching the games. When Sean started reading Hour of the Olympics I expected another glorified history of sportsmanship.

Mary Pope Osborne though decided to take things in a very different direction by focusing instead on women in ancient Greece. By showing up in the games Annie is in danger of arrest or worse by violating the rules and traditions by simply being there. Annie further exasperates things by ignoring the warnings and going in disguise to a chariot race. Annie learns that the poet they've come to meet is a woman. She circumvents society's rules by writing stories anonymously.

Here in the book though was Sean's aha moment when he realized most of his favorite books are written by women. He spent much of the evening after he finished the book talking about how unfair it was to live back then or any place where people are limited by similar rules. It's good to see a book make him think so much.

I was happy to see Osborne finally address gender inequality. It seems like she was avoiding the issue entirely in the previous books, even when it could have been easily worked into the story.

Here, it's not only a major element of the plot, but Annie's humourous -- and successful -- method of subversion is an important story point as well.

I also liked the pegasus.