By Jon Scieszka
Three friends open a magic book and land in King Arthur's England, right in front of a giant who wants them for dinner.
Joe gets a strange book from his magician uncle, and before he and his two best friends Sam and Fred can work out how it does what it does, it drops all three of them into medieval England. They land in a muddy field in their sneakers, and almost at once they meet a giant, a fire-breathing dragon, and a knight so filthy nobody will stand near him. The whole problem is finding the book again so they can get home before something eats them. It's fast, it's silly, and the three of them spend most of it bickering and grossing each other out.
This is the Magic Tree House setup with the silliness turned all the way up. The time travel works the same way, a magic book instead of a magic tree house, so a child who loved the crossing gets it again, but Scieszka writes it like his friends are cracking each other up the whole time. The chapters are short, Lane Smith's drawings are strange and funny, and more than a dozen more books follow, each dropping the same three boys into a different corner of history. Hand it to a child who wants the adventure but wants to laugh even more.