I once played Ms. Frizzle, the cryptic and audacious teacher of the Magic School Bus books, on a summer Sunday at Forever Books in St. Joseph, Michigan. I wore an overlarge yellow dress with an animal print and a wide collar. After an effort to dye my hair red had limited results, I wore an itchy wig. And heels. To a shopful of kids, I read one of "my" books. I did a science demonstration that involved a minor controlled explosion, and I gasped along with the rest of them. And later, I signed Magic School Bus books for the kids, taking care to put my autograph in character.
It's startling to realize that Ms. Frizzle and the Magic School Bus books celebrate their 25th anniversary this year. Or, if that number doesn't drop your jaw, how about this: 58 million Magic School Bus books are in print in 10 languages. Author Joanna Cole published the first title, The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks, in 1986. The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge (!!!) was published in March. (From the publisher description: "Like it or not, global warming is a hot topic, and it will affect the younger generation the most.") Inside the Human Body was always my favorite.
What's particularly interesting about the Magic School Bus series? It is a hybrid of an illustrated children's book and a comic. More than simply depicting the text, the illustrations participate in the text, with comics-style dialogue and visual grammer -- and it does it without subsuming the narrative that appears in traditional paragraphs. It's a formula that clearly works. And it makes me wonder why we haven't seen more books that experiment with form like this.
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