The Magic School Bus (book series)

The Magic School Bus is a series of children's books about science, written by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen. They feature the antics of Ms. Valerie Frizzle and her class, who board a sentient anthropomorphic Type A school bus which takes them on field trips to impossible locations, including the solar system, clouds, the past, and the human body. The books are written in the first person from the point of view of an unnamed student in "the Friz's" class. The class pet Liz, a lizard, accompanies the class on their field trips.

Since the Magic School Bus books present scientific facts in the form of stories in which fantastic things happen (for example, the 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.

Craig Walker, vice-president and senior editorial director at Scholastic Co., stated that the concept began with the idea of combining science with fictional stories, and Joanna Cole (who had written both science and humor before) and Bruce Degen were then approached with creating such a series. Walker also states that his own memories of school field trips and of a teacher he had once, served as further inspiration.

The first book "At the Waterworks" was written in 1985 and published the following year.

Cole and Degen 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.

Scholastic Entertainment, the American Meteorological Society and the Children's Museum of Houston created a Scholastics the Magic School Bus Kicks Up a Storm, a 2,600 sq ft (240 m²). traveling exhibit funded in part by the National Science Foundation, which premiered at the Children's Museum of Houston in 2003 (a copy of it opened in New Jersey the month after that).

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