The Magic School Bus
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The Magic School Bus is a series of children's books, intended to teach scientific concepts to children. They were written by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen, between the years 1986 and 2006. The most recent book was published in August 2006.
The books have been adapted into a television series of the same name.
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[edit] Premise
The Magic School Bus features the antics of Ms. Frizzle and her class of eight children (in the original books, the class population was at a larger and more standard amount), who board a magical school bus which takes them on field trips into the solar system, under the Earth, into the human body, or to other such impossible locations. The books were written in the first person from the point of view of an unnamed student in "the Friz's" class.
Since the Magic School Bus books present scientific facts in the form of stories in which fantastic things happen (for example, a bus turns into a spaceship, or children shrink to the size of blood cells), each book has a page at the end detailing in a humorous manner which parts of the book represented scientific fact and which were fanciful storytelling. In the books' television adaptation, this was replaced by the Producer Says segment at the end of each episode, in which the producer of the show (voiced by Malcolm-Jamal Warner of The Cosby Show fame) receives phone calls from kids complaining about how some things that happened on the show couldn't happen in real life.
After the last Magic School Bus book was released, Cole and Degan started a new series called Ms. Frizzle's Adventures in 2001, which teaches social studies. There are now three books in that series. Microsoft Home started publishing Magic School Bus software in 1994.
[edit] Characters
Ms. Frizzle's class was originally larger in the books than the class on the television series. In the original books, Ms. Frizzle's class consisted of Tim, Arnold, Ralph (changed to "Ralphie" on the show), Dorothy Ann, Wanda, Alex, Amanda Jane, Rachel, Gregory, Florrie, Carmen, Michael, Phil, Molly, Shirley and John. Phoebe was first introduced in the 1987 book, The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth, and Carlos and Keesha were added in the 1994 book, The Magic School Bus In the Time of Dinosaurs.
[edit] List of books and merchandise
[edit] External links
