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corpse was stolen from its grave and brought to Venice in the ninth century. Since the traditional symbol of Saint Mark is a winged lion, that image is depicted all over the city in paintings and sculptures. In Saint Mark’s Square alone, there are no fewer than fourteen!
    In Venice, there are approximately 3,000 alleys and 200 canals. Over 400 bridges connect 118 lagoon islands.
    Many world-famous painters are from Venice. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is considered the most important of the 1700s. His two sons, Giandomenico and Lorenzo, were also painters.
    Neptune is the Roman counterpart of the sea god Poseidon from Greek mythology. Neptune’s three-pronged fish spear is called a trident. When astronomers named the planet Neptune, they chose the trident to be its symbol.

Author’s Research Note
    Whenever I start work on a new Magic Tree House book, I begin the great adventure of research. I visit libraries, the Internet, bookstores, and museums. I talk to people who are knowledgeable about my subject, and if I’m able, I visit the place where the story occurs.
    I chose to write a Magic Tree House story about Venice because I was eager to visit that wonderful city again. I had been to Venice a few years earlier, and when I returned home, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I especially remembered the warm summer night when I’d first stepped into Piazza San Marco, or St. Mark’s Square. I remembered the beauty and magic of the square’s architecture, the candlelit outdoor-café tables, and the sweet violin music played by musicians in tuxedos. I was dying to go back to Venice. What better excuse than to write a Magic Tree House book about the city and have a good reason to return?
    On my second trip to Venice, I brought my guide book, camera, and notebook. I visited museums and bought books filled with paintings of Carnival costumes from the 1700s. I took photographs of the watchtower and the clock tower. I visited the Palazzo Ducale, or Doge’s Palace, on the Piazza San Marco and took notes on the statues of Neptune and Mars, the paintings of the winged lions on the wall of the Map Room, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s painting
Neptune Offering Venice the Gifts of the Sea
, which now hangs in a palace chamber.
    My most unforgettable experience in the Doge’s Palace was a visit to the historic palace jail on the ground floor. I walked down a series of narrow, damp passageways and stone stairways and over the Bridge of Sighs until I came to the empty cells. In my notebook, I sketched diagrams of barred windows and heavy wooden doors.
    As I tried to leave, I became confused about how to get out of the prison. Breathless, my heart pounding, I rushed through the musty-smelling passageways and up and down the steep stairways.
    Finally I found my way back out onto the beautiful, sunny square. Once I had escaped from the palace, I happily thought, “Now, when I write about Jack and Annie’s experience in the doge’s jail, I’ll
really
know how they would feel!”
    On the morning I left Venice, I rode in a gondola and took notes on how the gondolier pushed his oar. I took notes on the pink early-morning light shimmering on the canal waters. I photographed the ancient city from offshore, trying to record its beauty and sense of timelessness. But no photographs can truly do Venice justice. No notes or diagrams can truly capture her. Venice lives best in memory, stirring the deep waters of the imagination.

Here’s a special preview of
Magic Tree House #34
(A Merlin Mission)

Season of the Sandstorms

    Available now!
    Excerpt copyright © 2005 by Mary Pope Osborne.
Published by Random House Children’s Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

J ack put his math homework aside. He opened the drawer beside his bed and pulled out a small, handmade book. For the hundredth time, he stared at the title on the cover:
10 MAGIC RHYMES FOR ANNIE AND JACK
FROM TEDDY AND KATHLEEN
    For weeks, Jack had kept the book