Review by Booklist Review
Verbal and visual elements work seamlessly together as Ms. Frizzle takes her students soaring around the earth to study climate change, through the atmosphere to understand the greenhouse effect, above solar and wind power installations to see alternative energy sources, and above their town to observe carbon dioxide emissions. Back at school and at home, they start putting energy-saving practices into effect. Given the breadth and complexity of the topic, this may be the most ambitious book yet in the Magic School Bus series. Cole and Degen carry it off with their matchless combination of intelligence, style, and grade-school humor.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In another humorous outing, Ms. Frizzle's class returns to get "really up-to-date information" on global warming for their school play. Readers follow as the kids travel to the Arctic to see melting ice, view worldwide effects of climate change (which appear in comic book-like panels), and catch rides on sunbeams to learn about the greenhouse effect. Notebook pages with the students' notes round out this fun and fact-filled adventure. Ages 7-10. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-5-In this addition to the innovative and hilarious series, the Magic School Bus gets refitted as a hybrid and Ms. Frizzle and her class challenge readers to go green. After traveling in their bus-plane and showing in storyboard style example after example of the Earth's changing climate, Ms. Frizzle, reluctant traveler Arnold, new South Korean classmate Joon, and the gang ride sun rays to the Earth, and then get back on the bus as those rays (and riders) get caught by heat-trapping gases. Microscope-goggles make CO2 and other molecules visible as strings of bubbles, and the class observes that people using energy is an overwhelming source of these gases, and they decide to conserve right away. They put on a play about global warming, grabbing the attention of the media and inspiring the whole town. Children won't want to miss the punning online Q & A chat page wrapping up the challenge and Ms. Frizzle and Liz on their tandem bike. Pair this book with Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch's informative How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate (Dawn, 2008) to explore evidence for rapid climate change and inspire kids to become citizen scientists and advocates.-Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School PS 347, New York City (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
As in the previous books in this outstanding science series, the students in Ms. Frizzle's class head out on an investigative field trip, this time to gather information for their play about "Earth and all the changes that are happening." In the magic school bus (temporarily a plane), the students fly over the Arctic to witness for themselves receding glaciers and melting polar ice, high up into the atmosphere to see proliferating carbon dioxide molecules, and down again to view alternative energy sources at work. Ms. Frizzle is as enthusiastic and upbeat as ever, especially when riding sunbeams down to earth ("Isn't it fun?") and back up again, as the students experience for themselves the greenhouse effect. The author and illustrator are straightforward about the seriousness of global warming but eschew gloom-and-doom, focusing in the end on changes individuals can make in their daily lives to save energy. As always, Cole and Degen make use of prolific sidebars to provide basic background information (explanations of everything from climate and fossil fuels to solar cells), deepen the discussion ("Biofuels: Are They Better?"), and, especially in the "Kids Can..." sidebars, empower the book's audience. Throughout, humor, a hallmark of the series, keeps readers engaged (Student #1: "I conserve paper by writing on the back." Student #2: "I conserve paper, too -- by not doing my homework!"). May Ms. Frizzle and her class return for many more field trips -- in their now-hybrid magic school bus. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
