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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Amity Public Library | JUV 628.162 COLE | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Jefferson Public Library | P MAGIC SCHOOL BUS | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Lyons Public Library | J 628.1 MAGIC | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Newberg Public Library | 628.1 COLE | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
For use in schools and libraries only. Ms. Frizzle and her class take field trips to extraordinary places using their magic school bus. Illustrations by Bruce Degen.
Author Notes
Joanna Cole was born in Newark, New Jersey on August 11, 1944. She attended the University of Massachusetts, Indiana University, and City College of New York where she earned a degree in Psychology.
Ms. Cole has worked as an elementary school teacher, a librarian, and a children's book editor. As a child, she loved science and explaining things and this is why she started writing children's books. She writes fiction and non-fiction titles. Her most well-known series are the Magic School Bus and the "Body."
Cole's books have received a number of honors. A Horse's Body and A Snake's Body were both named Outstanding Science Trade Books for children by the joint committee of the National Science Teachers Association and the Children's Book Council. In 1982, A Snake's Body was named a Children's Choice Book by the joint committee of the International Reading Association and the Children's Book Council. Both A Cat's Body and A Bird's Body were Junior Literary Guild selections. In 1991, she was awarded the Washington Post/Children's Book Guild Nonfiction award.
Joanna Cole, who wrote over 250 books for children, died on July 12, 2020 at the age of 75.
030 (Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-4A remarkable meshing of text and illustration make this an outstand ing, lively treatment of a subject for which there is very little written for this age group. Ms. Frizzle has assigned her class a month-long investigation of how their city gets its water supply, to be followed by a field trip to the water works. With ``The Friz'' as driver, the children encounter surprise after sur prise, as they are magically clad in scu ba gear while in a tunnel, then slowly ascend to a cloud, where each child dis embarks; falls as a drop of water into a mountain stream; flows into a reser voir; and bounces through the purifica tion system, pipes, and water mains un der the city streets. The trip ends with all arriving, drop by drop, in the girls' bathroom in their school as a seventh grader turns on the water faucet. A sub sequent classroom mural is drawn of their field trip with the interesting facts of water posted above. Not such a bad trip after all! Liveliness and humor combine to provide valuable informa tion in a simple, explicit text, totally complemented by cheery cartoon-like illustrations. A finishing flourish are the two pages of humorous and lightheart ed notes (for SERIOUS students only) at the text's end. This book will rarely sit on the shelf.Mary Lou Budd, Mil ford South Elementary School, Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Cole combines science and whimsy to create an entertaining story, filled with facts about drinking water. Ms. Frizzle doesn't take her class on mundane field trips. To study the waterworks, she loads them into a magic schoolbus that carries them to a cloud. There, each student is miniaturized within a raindrop and follows the water through purification and back to school, where they emerge through the tap in the girls' bathroom and return to normal size. Degen's full-color illustrations are appealing; balloons carry the running commentary among students, and their notebook reports relay much information painlessly. (6-9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
This picture book for older children blends this well-known author's fiction and non-fiction talents to convey facts about water supply while telling a mildly amusing tale about a wacky field trip. Ms. Frizzle is the strangest teacher in school: she wears dresses in reptile prints, makes her students read five science books a week, and insists on such weird projects as making clay models of garbage dumps. The day of the field trip, her bus ascends to a cloud, from which she and her class disembark, clad suddenly in scuba gear, for a trip through a reservoir system: through water mains, water pipes and out again (in shrunken size) through the faucet of the school's girls' bathroom. Along the way, everyone gets a clear idea of a reservoir-based water system, plus 10 basic facts about water. Cole concludes with a tongue-in-cheek list of things that happened in the book which couldn't really happen, for those who don't like mixing science with fiction. Although classified as fiction, the story hardly stands on its own, but as an introduction to water and water utility systems, it is entertaining and understandable. Its best use would he in classrooms, where the students could enjoy both its sly humor and useful information. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 2-5, younger for reading aloud. Not since dePaola's Clouds and Quicksand has a picture book made science so much fun. The story begins, ``Our class really has bad luck. This year, we got Ms. Frizzle, the strangest teacher in the school.'' Ms. Frizzle, an unflappable naturalist with the magical powers of a Mary Poppins, drives the school bus up into a cloud where the children shrink to the size of water droplets. Enveloped by raindrops, they make an unforgettable trip down through the air, to a stream, on to the city reservoir, through the stages of a water purification system, through the pipes, into their school building, and ``when a seventh-grader turned on the faucet in the girls' bathroom, we came splashing out.'' The brightly colored, cartoonlike illustrations are full of clever, informative, and often hilarious visual details, while conventional comic strip balloons carry the students' observations and wisecracks. Cole and Degen's fine portrayal of the ambience of the classroom grounds the book so firmly in reality that the wild events of the class trip are surprising, but convincing. As the nameless narrator (ever deadpan, ever droll) remarks on the last page, ``Ms. Frizzle says we'll be studying volcanoes next. This makes us all a little nervous!'' Readers of Waterworks will surely hope they do and will eagerly await the publication of a sequel to this original and unusually successful combination of fact and fancy. CP. Water treatment plants Fiction / School excursions Fiction / Teachers Fiction [CIP] 86-6672