The Knight at Dawn is the second book in Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House series of historical fiction adventures for children. The series contains over 40 novels, and Osborne has also published several nonfiction supplements called Fact Trackers, including a companion piece to this novel entitled Knights and Castles. 

The Knight at Dawn builds upon the series’ debut, Dinosaurs Before Dark, in which Jack and Annie first discover the time-traveling tree house and journey back to the Cretaceous Period. The Knight at Dawn begins after they return, early the next morning. Although Annie is eager for more adventures, the siblings’ recent encounter with the Tyrannosaurus Rex makes Jack hesitant to return to the tree house at the start of this story.

The first four books of the series explore the Mystery of the Tree House, a longer story arc in which Jack and Annie put together clues to discover the magic tree house’s creator. Each presents an adventure in which Jack and Annie travel to a different time period, and these individual stories are linked by the siblings’ search. In The Knight at Dawn, Jack finds a bookmark that matches the gold medallion he and Annie discover in Dinosaurs Before Dark.