40 Fun Facts About Buffalo Before Breakfast

In Buffalo Before Breakfast, what small accident by the Lakota boy sets off the buffalo stampede?

A sneeze is all it takes: the nearest buffalo jerks up its head and rushes at him, and the panic ripples through the whole herd.

Which gift from the Lakota boy's grandmother completes Jack and Annie's mission in Buffalo Before Breakfast?

An eagle feather solves the riddle: the bird rules the wide blue sky over the plains, and the grandmother presents it to honor what the children did at the herd.

In Buffalo Before Breakfast, which young Lakota warrior takes Jack and Annie to meet his grandmother?

Black Hawk looks like a grown warrior on horseback until he comes close: he is a boy of about ten or eleven on a pony.

In the eighteenth Magic Tree House book, which Lakota spirit helps Annie calm the stampeding herd?

White Buffalo Woman appears beside Annie, raises her hands and vanishes once the herd is calm; in Lakota tradition she is a sacred messenger.

As Jack reads in Buffalo Before Breakfast, the American buffalo is more correctly known by which name?

Bison is the accurate name: the word buffalo properly belongs to the water buffalo of Asia and the African buffalo, and early European explorers borrowed it for the American animal.

In Buffalo Before Breakfast, the Lakota boy hunts in the skin of which animal to feel its strength?

A wolf, the boy explains, is the buffalo's most powerful hunter; he gives Jack and Annie a fright by walking out of his home inside the hide.

Which Lakota name does the grandmother give Jack at the campfire in Buffalo Before Breakfast?

Rides-Like-Wind is Jack's new name, and Annie becomes Buffalo Girl; the grandmother then welcomes both children into her family.

Which author created Jack and Annie and wrote Buffalo Before Breakfast in the Magic Tree House series?

Mary Pope Osborne had wanted for several years to send Jack and Annie to visit Native American people of the 1800s before she settled on the Lakota.

Which hide-covered homes do the Lakota of Buffalo Before Breakfast take down to follow the herds?

Tepees kept the Lakota on the move: the cover and its long poles came down quickly, and the word itself comes from the Lakota language.

Jack and Annie of Buffalo Before Breakfast set out from the fictional town of Frog Creek in which US state?

Pennsylvania is where every trip ends: Jack points to a picture of Frog Creek in a book about the state and wishes to go home.

Why does the grandmother in Buffalo Before Breakfast tell her grandson to show the herd but not hunt?

The camp has enough meat for the day, and she adds a rule the children admire: the Lakota never take more buffalo than they need.

How do Jack and Annie have to ride the ponies that carry them to the herd in Buffalo Before Breakfast?

Bareback riding here means no saddle, and the ponies have no reins either: Annie tells Jack to hold the mane and grip with his legs, and she names the two ponies Midnight and Sunlight.

In Buffalo Before Breakfast, the tree house's magic turns Jack and Annie's clothes into which material?

Buckskin is soft leather usually made from deer hide; Jack gets a shirt and trousers, Annie a fringed dress, and both wear soft boots and coonskin caps.

Where do Jack and Annie hide when they first spot the Lakota camp in Buffalo Before Breakfast?

In the tall grass, which grows as high as Jack's chest, the pair crouch out of sight until Teddy's barking gives them away to a passing rider.

Which quality, prized by the Lakota, does Jack summon to climb onto a pony in Buffalo Before Breakfast?

Courage does not come easily to cautious Jack, but he has read that the Lakota admire people who show no fear, so he lets out a whoop and holds on.

When the stampede traps the Lakota boy in Buffalo Before Breakfast, what does Jack do on his pony?

Jack charges in to save him: the golden pony weaves between the running buffalo, the boy throws himself across its back and they race up the slope.

Which gift for Teddy have Jack and Annie already collected when Buffalo Before Breakfast begins?

A pocket watch, its hands stopped at 2:20, sits beside the note in the tree house; a girl called Lucy gave it to the children as thanks for their help.

Which book, the first of Teddy's four-gift quest, comes straight before Buffalo Before Breakfast?

Tonight on the Titanic came out in March 1999, two months before this book, and is where the enchanted dog first turns up to lead the children.

After Buffalo Before Breakfast, Jack and Annie search for Teddy's third gift in the forests of which country?

India is the faraway forest of the riddle: in the next book a hermit gives the children a lotus flower after they free a tiger from a trap.

Two books after Buffalo Before Breakfast, the last of Teddy's gifts comes from which Australian animal?

A kangaroo mother hands over a piece of painted bark in Dingoes at Dinnertime, thanking Jack and Annie for protecting her joey from a wildfire.

Once all four gifts are collected, Teddy, the enchanted dog of Buffalo Before Breakfast, changes into what?

A young boy stands where the dog was: Teddy had been a helper at Camelot who grew too curious and turned himself into a dog while reading a spell book.

Which enchantress of Camelot owns the tree house and leaves the note about Teddy in Buffalo Before Breakfast?

Morgan le Fay is one of King Arthur's siblings in most versions of the legend, and in these books she is a magical librarian who signs the note with her first name.

Which illustrator drew Buffalo Before Breakfast and the other original Magic Tree House books?

Sal Murdocca has illustrated more than 200 children's books, and away from the drawing board he writes the words for children's operas.

Which book launched the Magic Tree House series in 1992, seventeen titles ahead of Jack and Annie's Lakota adventure?

Dinosaurs Before Dark sent Jack and Annie back to the late Cretaceous, where a Pteranodon saved them from a Tyrannosaurus rex.

The Lakota people of Buffalo Before Breakfast belong to which larger group of Great Plains nations?

The Sioux are made up of three related peoples, and the Lakota, also known as the Teton, became the great horse-riding buffalo hunters of the northern plains.

The Great Plains of Buffalo Before Breakfast stretch east from the foot of which mountain range?

The Rockies mark the western edge of the plains, which take in most of Kansas and Nebraska and the eastern parts of Colorado, Montana and Wyoming.

Which American park sheltered the last wild herd of buffalo, the animals of Buffalo Before Breakfast?

Yellowstone is the only place in the United States where wild buffalo were never wiped out, and its herd is the country's oldest public one.

In Buffalo Before Breakfast the Lakota load their homes onto pole frames dragged by horses, called what?

A travois is two long poles lashed into an A shape with a platform between them; before horses came to the plains, smaller ones were pulled by dogs.

The coonskin caps Jack and Annie wear in Buffalo Before Breakfast are tied to which American frontiersman?

Davy Crockett became the face of the cap through Disney television episodes in 1954 and 1955, which made it hugely popular with boys in the 1950s.

In Buffalo Before Breakfast, the Lakota send prayers skyward on the smoke of which sacred object?

A pipe, known in Lakota as the chanunpa, is held up and offered to each of the four directions before it passes around the circle at the evening fire.

The Lakota, the people of Buffalo Before Breakfast, have their five main reservations in which US state?

South Dakota holds Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Lower Brule and Cheyenne River and shares Standing Rock with North Dakota, with smaller Lakota communities in other nearby states and in Canada.

Decades after the events of Buffalo Before Breakfast, the Lakota defeated General Custer at which battle?

The Little Bighorn was an overwhelming victory for the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho, inspired by the visions of Sitting Bull.

The ponies ridden in Buffalo Before Breakfast descend from horses brought to the Americas by which Europeans?

The Spanish brought horses in the 1500s, and the Lakota took up riding around 1730 after trading for the animals with the Cheyenne.

Buffalo Before Breakfast carries Jack and Annie to the Great Plains in which era of American history?

The Old West of this story is the early 1800s, before settlers and soldiers reached the plains and while the great buffalo herds still roamed.

When do Jack and Annie leave the Lakota camp for the tree house in Buffalo Before Breakfast?

At dawn the next day the whole camp is packing up to follow the herds, so the children say goodbye and walk back toward the sunrise.

The Lakota of Buffalo Before Breakfast pounded dried buffalo meat with fat into which long-lasting food?

Pemmican mixes dried meat with tallow and sometimes berries; it kept so well that European fur traders and polar explorers later adopted it.

The Great Spirit honored by the Lakota in Buffalo Before Breakfast goes by which name in their language?

Wakan Tanka is usually translated as the Great Spirit, though some Lakota speakers prefer the Great Mystery.

Which official title did the United States give the buffalo, the animal of Buffalo Before Breakfast, in 2016?

National mammal became the buffalo's title in 2016, a comeback for an animal that hunting had left nearly extinct in the 1880s.

Which nonfiction companion series gives Magic Tree House readers the real history behind the adventures?

Fact Trackers were first called Research Guides and began in August 2000 as companions to the first two stories.

In the original Buffalo Before Breakfast illustrations, which accessory does Jack always wear?

Red glasses mark Jack out in the original artwork, and in the story he nudges them back into place once he is safely up on his pony.