The Magic School Bus

K-Gr 3—Joanna Cole's beloved story (Scholastic, rev. ed. 2010) receives stellar treatment in this top-notch production. Miss Frizzle and her class—along with ace student Arnold's braggart, know-it-all cousin Janet—take a field trip to the local planetarium, only to discover it is closed for repairs. But the day is saved when the Magic School Bus's newly-sprouted rockets blast it into outer space. The class embarks on a journey through the solar system, stopping at—or at least flying by—the moon, the sun, each of the planets, and Pluto (its status updated for this revised edition). Along the way, a tail light is broken by an errant asteroid and Miss Frizzle is separated from the class when she ventures on a spacewalk to repair it. The kids have to use their brains to devise a way to return to Earth. Replete with a full cast performance, occasional sound effects, and an energetic background score, the book comes to life for listeners. Illustrator Bruce Degen explains before the performance begins that the book—a blend of text, comic book-style illustrations, one- to two-sentence sidebar student reports, and more—will not be performed in a linear fashion, but rather the way that makes the most sense. And it is done to perfection, leaving out only the superfluous textual components of the illustrations, and ending with Miss Frizzle reading each of the student's brief reports while directing listeners to the appropriate pages so they can follow along. Page-turn signals are optional. An outstanding production.—Jennifer Verbrugge, Dakota County Library, Eagan, MN