Mary Pope Osborne, the esteemed children’s writer, was looking for an idea. What would be a good book for kids aged six-to-nine who were currently in grades one-to-four?

Then inspiration hit. She’d write about a Magic Tree House where boys and girls would go and find a bevy of picture books. Once they opened a volume, the kids would be miraculously transported to the time and place about which they were reading.

The more Osborne thought about it, the more appealing the Magic Tree House became. It was a nice metaphor, because taking us to another time and place is what our imaginations figuratively do when we read.

It was such a good idea, it might even make a series. Of course, for that to happen, Osborne would have to begin with a bang. The first book would have to cause such excitement that kids would demand more and more Magic Tree House books.

So what was the ideal topic for her introductory book? Astronauts? Pirates? Ninjas? Polar bears? She considered all – and would eventually write about all those and more than three dozen other subjects.

But none of those would have happened if her choice for her first book didn’t enchant kids. And it did: Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark.

What is it that makes little kids fascinated by dinosaurs? Even those toddlers who have trouble pronouncing certain one-syllable words somehow manage to perfectly say Tyrannosaurus Rex, prosauropod and iguanodon.

And iguanodon would be one of the creatures that young siblings Annie and Jack would meet soon after the Magic Tree House whisked them back in time.

Doesn’t it sound like a musical? Bookwriter Jenny Laird, composer-lyricist Randy Courts and lyricist Will Osborne certainly thought so. So they created a forty-minute work: Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark Kids. Two weeks ago, it brought much pleasure to children of many ages and genuine adults, thanks to the Manhattan company known as Kidz Theater.

While Kidz Theater often presents ambitious musicals – it’s already done Sweeney Todd and Urinetown is on tap for December – it offers a summer intensive for tweens and teens each year. The program itself is so fascinating that I’ll go into detail next Friday; for now, however, let’s concentrate on Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark Kids.

It’s not many works that could list “Time: Now and the Cretaceous period.” That’s a 145-million year span between scenes. You might think that going that far back in time and being in a thoroughly unfamiliar universe might unnerve pre-teen characters, but director Kristen Caesar honors both Osborne and the text by making the kids full of wonder rather than consumed by fear. Think of the way Dorothy Gale was entranced by most everything she saw in Oz and how almost unstintingly brave she was during the entire experience. Mavis Simpson-Ernst’s Annie and Luka Kain’s Jack both replicated that “Isn’t this amazing?” demeanor as opposed to “I’m scared to death!” What this musical is, then, is a benign Jurassic Park.

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Both Simpson-Ernst and Kain had a fine old time playing strangers in a strange land, but a case can be made that two dozen other kids cast as dinosaurs enjoyed performing even more. It isn’t every day that they get to roar, boom and crunch. Even some eight-year-olds got into the act by playing baby dinosaurs; they were “hatched” through hula hoops that had been completely covered with glittery fabric, but split vertically for easy entrance.

Designer Kyla McHale made a mask for each iguanodon, ankylosaurus, protoceratops, troodon, panoplosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex. She also had to create three for the triceratops, four for the baby dinosaurs and six for the anatosauri. There was a lesson to be learned here: if you do a production of Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark Kids, make headpieces rather than masks. Don’t obscure any kid’s face, not only because an audience has fun witnessing a young actor grimace with menace, but also because the crowd can better hear what the actor has to say.

Theatregoers in fact rely on lip-reading more than they think. That’s especially true in a small space, and Kidz Theater produced Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark Kids in a room substantially smaller than many suburban living rooms. Here lip-reading would have been entirely possible – and helpful.

What may be most wonderful about Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark Kids is that it shows a young brother and sister in the face of adversity working together and relying on each other. To be sure, at the beginning, they’re your standard warring siblings (“Annie, cut it out!”), but the conflict they’ll soon encounter brings out the best in them.

Don’t think that the dinosaurs are thrilled to see humans show up in their world. Way back then, they certainly weren’t used to them, so many of the creatures on stage were immediately skeptical of these two odd-looking little things. Who can blame them? Here’s where Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark Kids teaches a valuable lesson: a person you confront who’s bigger than you may well be just as scared of you as you are of him. As one lyric went, “Friend or foe? How do you know? You gotta be smart.” So don’t automatically assume that you’re in danger and don’t do anything to provoke. Start out peacefully, and you just might both end up peacefully, too.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t be a dinosaur show without a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and, oh, did Andy Viviano enjoy himself when this carnivore got to act ferocious. The climax came after the kids escaped the beast, when Jack realized that he’d left an important possession behind and felt he had to return to retrieve it. In the midst of the chaos was a nice message for kids: if you’re more careful with your things and don’t lose them, you won’t have to go back to find them. Why run the risk of getting into trouble when all you had to do was be careful in the first place?

Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark Kids also offers a chorus. But even here, your costume designer can have fun, because the chorus is purposely made up of trees. Yes – trees, and much nicer ones than those cranky apple-throwers in THE WIZARD OF OZ. Seven kids portrayed The Trees who sat upstage with their backs against the wall and who occasionally commented on the action.

Best of all, even when the Trees had nothing to say, they looked fully engaged in the action, with their faces naturally showing everything from interest to delight to fear. This might have happened because their director demanded that the kids always pay attention and not look like lumps on a log (even though their characters were darn close to them). On the other hand, these seven kids just might have been having as good a time as the audience in watching the show unfold.

Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark Kids also suggests commonalities between the two species. When one adult female dinosaur declared that “A mother’s work is never done,” everything from giggles to hearty laughs came from the audience. Mothers have been known to say that line early and often, so in addition to young tykes who may have heard their own moms say it this morning, even the most elderly were remembering their own mothers saying the line.

As a result, I wasn’t surprised when young and old gave the show a standing ovation. I’ve never seen it happen with a cast full of dinosaurs and trees, but it happened here. Look for your audience to stand too after you mount your production of Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark Kids.

Read all of Filichia Features.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com.

Check out his weekly column each Tuesday at www.masterworksbroadway.com and each Friday at www.kritzerland.com. His book, Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks – a Very Opinionated History of the Broadway Musicals That Did Not Win the Tony Award is now available at www.amazon.com.