Hi, my name is Carlos. I am one of the kids in Ms. Frizzle's class.
Maybe you've heard of Ms. Frizzle. (Sometimes we just call her the Friz.) She is a terrific teacher -- but a little strange. One of her favorite subjects is science, and she knows everything about it.
She takes us on lots of field trips in the Magic School Bus. Believe me, it's not called magic for nothing! We never know what's going to happen when we get on that bus.
Ms. Frizzle likes to surprise us, but we can usually tell when she is planning a special lesson -- we just look at what she's wearing.
A few months ago, Ms. Frizzle showed up in an astronaut jumpsuit. We had just started a unit on the solar system, so we thought Ms. Frizzle was dressed up to get us in the mood. Of course, we couldn't actually take a field trip to outer space. (Ha-ha.) But the joke was on us. Let me tell you what happened....
I stuffed my homework in my backpack and ran out the door. I was in a hurry to get to school. Today was Solar System Day. Our homework was to write a report on one of the nine planets. My report was on Mars, my favorite. I just knew my report would be the best!
But that wasn't the only reason I was in a hurry. I had finally finished putting together Rocco the Rockhound Robot -- a remote control rover I made from a kit. I'd been working on him for weeks -- there must have been a zillion parts. Now Rocco was ready to roll, and I was taking him to school for show-and-tell.
When I got to class, Ms. Frizzle was hanging up a chart of the solar system.
Our Solar System
The solar system is the sun and all the bodies that orbit around it -- the nine planets, their moons, asteroids (chunks of rock), and comets (balls of ice and dust).
The sun is the center of our solar system.
The sun supplies ALL the light and ALMOST ALL the heat for EVERYTHING else in the solar system. No planet, moon, comet, or asteroid has any light of its own.
One by one the rest of the class came in. They crowded around to look at Rocco. "Cool toy, Carlos!" said Dorothy Ann. (Most of the time we call her D. A.)
Rocco was modeled after Sojourner, the first robot rover to explore Mars. But Rocco looked more like a dog than a robot. As he rolled along on his wheels, his head turned from side to side and his tail wagged. He even made a little beeping noise as he moved. It sounded something like yip, yip, yip.
But the best thing about Rocco was his rock pocket -- a secret compartment in his back. When I pushed a button on the remote, the rock pocket opened and out popped a built-in mechanical arm with a scoop at the end.
The scoop could be dragged along the ground to pick up rocks and soil. Another button on the remote turned the arm and dumped the stuff into the rock pocket. It was the neatest way to find rocks for my collection.
"Rocco isn't a toy, " I said. "He's a robot rock collector." I pushed the button to open Rocco's rock pocket. Inside were some rocks and reddish clay soil that Rocco had scooped up on the way to school.
"This soil looks a lot like the soil on Mars," I said.
Ralphie laughed. "No way, " he said. "Mars's soil is green, just like Martians."
"You've got rocks in your head, Ralphie," I said. "That stuff about little green men on Mars is pure science fiction. Mars is actually called the red planet because of the rust in its soil."
"Well, I heard that there may have been life on Mars long ago," Phoebe said. "Maybe they had little green men then."
"You guys don't know anything," Keesha said. "Nothing could live on Mars -- it's too cold."
Ms. Frizzle put an end to the argument. "I think the best way to settle this is with our own eyes. Everyone, to the bus! Mars is only forty-nine million miles away. We can be there before lunch."
I tucked Rocco under my arm and followed the Friz to the parking lot. The bus looked a little different than usual. For one thing, there were a couple of huge rockets sticking out the back.
"Buckle your seat belts, " the Friz called. "A regular spaceship would take at least nine months to get to Mars. But this is the Magic School Bus. We'll be there in a jiffy!" She fired the rockets and we blasted off.
The great power of the rockets gave the bus enough speed to break away from Earth's gravity. We zoomed through the atmosphere into dark, airless space.
Once we were going fast enough, the Friz turned off the rockets. Right away, strange things started to happen. I had been holding Rocco on my lap. But I let go of him for a second -- and he floated up to the ceiling!
At the same time, Ralphie yelled, "Hey, I can fly!" He had unbuckled his seat belt and was floating above us like Peter Pan.
"That's because we're weightless while we stay in orbit around Earth, " Ms. Frizzle explained. "With the engines off, we're no longer being pulled toward the floor of the bus by gravity, so our bodies can float around."
"I've got to try it!" Keesha said. She unbuckled her seat belt and moved too quickly, spinning around in a somersault.
Soon we were all bumping into one another as we tumbled around inside the space-bus. We had to hold on to seat backs to steady ourselves.
Arnold was floating upside down near a window. "Look at Earth!" he said. "It's so beautiful from up here."
We all floated over to see. Earth was a blue-and-brownish-green sphere surrounded by swirling white clouds. Home sweet home.
"Earth is one of the four rocky planets, along with Mercury, Venus, and Mars," the Friz said. "But as you can see, most of the surface is covered with water. Some people think a better name for our planet would be Ocean."
There was a lot of water covering Earth. I couldn't believe how small the planet looked from space.
"Hey -- there's the moon!" Wanda called. "Or at least half of it."
"The whole moon is there, Wanda, " said Ms. Frizzle. "But we only see the part that is lit up by the sun's light."
I remembered that the moon is covered with rocks. "Ms. Frizzle," I said, "could we stop here? I always wanted some moon rocks for my collection?"
"Sure thing, Carlos!" Ms. Frizzle fired some engines to change our direction. We slowed down as we came near the bright side of the moon. It was covered with deep pits and craters that looked like huge bowls. We landed in one of the wide craters with a thud.
"Put on your space helmets, everyone!" Ms. Frizzle instructed us, showing us how to strap on our breathing equipment. '"You won't be able to breathe without the oxygen tanks. There's not a breath of air out there."
Since sound can't travel without air, we all had radios in our helmets so we could talk with one another.
I stepped carefully off the bus onto the dusty ground. Wow, I could hardly believe it. "I feel like Neil Armstrong, " I said. "One small step for Carlos"
"Watch your step, " the Friz told us. "The moon has gravity, but it's much weaker than on Earth. You're going to be much lighter on your feet here than you are at home."
The pull of gravity depends on the mass of the planet, moon, or other body in space. Usually, the larger the body, the more mass it has. The moon is much smaller than Earth, so it has much less gravity.
If you weigh 75 pounds on Earth, you would weigh only 12 pounds on the moon.
"Wheee!" called Ralphie. "This is better than a trampoline." He jumped easily off the ground, came back down, then bounced up.
Soon we were all leaping and laughing. D. A. and Keesha started a game of leapfrog.
"I can leap like a real frog!" Keesha said.
"I can jump like a cat!" D. A. said. "Come to think of it, I now weigh about the same as my cat does on Earth."
We were having so much fun, I almost forgot the reason we had come here in the first place.
"Rocks!" I said. "It's time to put Rocco to work."
I bent over and set Rocco down -- but I didn't see Tim jumping behind me. He came down and knocked me over. And Rocco flew out of my hands! As I fell, I landed on Rocco's remote control and accidentally hit the on button. Oh, no! Rocco's rockets fired up and he blasted off into space!
"Rocco!" I cried. I reached up to grab him, but he zoomed away. I could see his tail wagging as he went. Poor Rocco! He shot off into the darkness. He could be lost in space forever. What would I do without him?
"Hurry!" I yelled. "We've got to rescue Rocco."
Rocco was speeding farther and farther into space. If we didn't get going fast, we'd never be able to catch up with him.
As soon as everyone was aboard the space-bus, Ms. Frizzle fired the rockets and we took off after my little robot. Once we were out of orbit we were no longer weightless. We could walk around on the bus again.
"I'm sorry I bumped into you on the moon, Carlos," Tim said. "I hope we can get Rocco back."
"It's okay, " I said. "It was an accident."
"Keep an eye out, kids. We might see an asteroid or two, " Ms. Frizzle said. "They're chunks of rock."
"Hey, Ms. Frizzle, what's that bright star ahead?" Phoebe asked.
"It's not a star, Phoebe, " the Friz told her. "That's the planet Venus. Venus is the third brightest object we can see from Earth after the sun and the moon."
D. A. had done her report on Venus. She told us that Venus is so bright because the layers of thick clouds surrounding it reflect a lot of light from the sun.
Soon we could see the swirling clouds of Venus, and it looked as if Rocco was heading straight into them!
"Rocco will be a goner if he hits those clouds, " D. A. said. "They're made of sulfuric acid that would burn right through his metal skin."
Venus
Suddenly I remembered Rocco's remote control. It was in my pocket. Maybe I could use it to steer him away from those deadly clouds. I had to act fast before the planet's gravity pulled him in.
I pushed the reverse button. Right on! Rocco spun around and headed back toward the space-bus.
'"You did it, Carlos!" Tim yelled. "Now we just have to figure out how to get him inside once he gets close enough."
But before we could even think about that, something terrible happened. A small asteroid came hurtling along. It hit Rocco and sent him spinning off again.
"Follow that robot, please!" I called to Ms. Frizzle. The space-bus zoomed off, leaving Venus in our dust.
Rocco was going so fast, soon he was just a dot in space.
"Hey, Carlos, can you use Rocco's radio signal to follow him?" Ralphie asked.
"We can try," I said. I pushed the voice button. We heard a faint sound. "Yip, yip, yip:'
"I've located Rocco on the radar screen, " Ms. Frizzle said. She set a new course and fired the control thrusters.
We caught up with Rocco as he was approaching Mercury, the planet nearest the sun. We had to put on special goggles to block the sun's rays. We could feel the heat beating down on us. Ms. Frizzle pulled a lever that set up special heat shields around the bus.
"Mercury must be one hot planet," I said.
"The side that faces the sun is super-hot." Keesha said. She was the expert on Mercury. "But the other side is supercold. No other planet has such extremes of temperature. " 
"Yip, yip, yip" Rocco's radio signal was getting fainter. On the radar screen, we could see that Rocco was about to fly past Mercury. He was headed straight for the sun!
"Yip, yip, yip... YIP! YIP!" Rocco's beeps sounded like a call for help. 
I tried the reverse button on the remote again, but Rocco was out of range. All we could do was watch him on the radar screen getting nearer and nearer to the fiery sun.
"Look!" D. A. said. "Something weird is happening. Rocco has changed direction! Now he's heading for Mercury."
"Great, " I said. "He'll be smashed to smithereens instead of burnt to a crisp."
"No, " said Phoebe. "Rocco isn't going down. He's going into orbit around the planet!"
Sure enough, the dot on the radar screen was circling around Mercury.
"He has become a satellite," Keesha said. "He'll keep circling around Mercury just like the moon orbits Earth."
"That's lucky for us," Ms. Frizzle said. "Now we have a chance to rescue him."
"How?" Ralphie asked. "We can't just fly up and grab him."
Ms. Frizzle got that twinkle in her eye. "Well, Ralphie, you'll be surprised to know that's just what Carlos and I plan to do!" "Huh?" I said.
'"You bet! You've seen pictures of astronauts repairing satellites out in space, right?" Ms. Frizzle asked. "Just like them, we'll be wearing tether wires. We'll be attached to the Magic Space Bus so we can't float off."
"But we'll burn up in the sun's heat!" I protested.
"Not so, Carlos, " the Friz replied. She reached into a compartment and pulled out two shiny gold-coated umbrellas. "I happen to have here the very latest in parasol technology.
These parasols are made of special material that reflects heat and light. They'll protect us from the sun's rays."
First we had to get closer to Rocco. Ms. Frizzle pushed a button on the instrument panel, and we zoomed off toward Mercury.
How to Fly a Spaceship.
The secret to space travel is control thrusters! They're small rockets in the front and back of the spacecraft used to steer the spacecraft. They are mounted so that they can fire in all directions -- up and down, left and right. When you fire a rocket on the left, the spaceship will turn right.
The Magic Space Bus was now right between the sun and the planet. The sun looked twice as large as it does from Earth. Our goggles protected our eyes from its strong light.
Ms. Frizzle and I got into our space suits and entered the airlock, a small room with a hatch overhead.
When the airlock was closed, we put on our helmets and turned on the oxygen. Next we let out all the air in the room. Then Ms. Frizzle checked our tether wires.
"All set! Open the hatch, Carlos. We're ready to go."
What if my tether broke? I'd be floating in space forever. But I had to save Rocco.
I floated out behind Ms. Frizzle. The light was almost blinding. We opened our parasols and quickly strapped them to our backs. Now we could see better and move around above the bus.
I caught sight of a dark object floating near my head -- Rocco! I reached up ... but it was no good. He was too far away.
"Let out more of your tether, Carlos," the Friz said over the radio. "You've nearly got him."
I didn't want to get too far from the bus. I let out the line, but the movement started me tumbling around. I went over and over in a wild somersault. Space swirled around me.
"Whoa, there!" Ms. Frizzle said. She caught hold of my feet and stopped the spinning.
"Whew!" I said. "Thanks, Ms. Frizzle. I was getting dizzy."
Now Rocco was just a few feet away. With Ms. Frizzle still holding on to my feet, I stretched forward. My fingers wrapped around Rocco's tail, and I pulled him to me. "Got him!" Everyone on the bus cheered when they saw Rocco was back safely -- especially Tim.
"Now, class, " Ms. Frizzle said, "it's time to beat the heat and get out of here. This sun is hot stuff! "
How Hot Is the Sun?
The surface of the sun is almost 10/000F. But the inner core is much, much hotter -- 27 million. Just one spark that hot could set fire to everything within 60 miles!
Even with all that power, our sun is just an average star. Some stars are even bigger and hotter!
On our way back to Mars, we whizzed past Venus and the moon. I wished I had gotten some moon rocks, but I was glad to have Rocco back. Maybe we'd have better luck collecting rocks on Mars.
As we zoomed past Earth, Ms. Frizzle had to steer around something that looked like a giant shiny insect in space. I knew it really wasn't an insect. It was a space station in orbit around Earth!
"Sun power at work!" the Friz exclaimed. "Those huge solar panels use energy from the sun's rays to keep the space station supplied with power. Scientists can live and work in the station for months at a time."
"Cool!" D. A. said. "I'd like to work in a space station someday."
"Not me, " said Arnold. "It would be too weird floating around weightless day after day."
"You'd get used to it, Arnold, " D. A said. "Besides, there's plenty of exercise equipment to help you stay in shape."
"Another reason not to go," Arnold muttered. Gym was not his favorite class.
We were all glued to the window as the bus circled the space station, then flew off again toward Mars.
Suddenly Arnold yelled, "Ms. Frizzle, there's something following us!" He was pointing to a bright streak of light that seemed to be moving very fast in our direction.
"It's a comet!" cried Arnold. "I just read a book about how a comet smashed into Jupiter a few years ago. This one looks like it's going to smash into us!"
"According to my research," D. A. said, reading from her laptop, "comets orbit the sun just like planets."
The comet was gaining on us.
"Hold on!" Ms. Frizzle said. "We're going to need some extra rocket power to keep ahead of the comet. Three... two... one... firing rockets!"
With a whoosh, the space-bus shot forward. But the comet was right behind. It seemed to be getting closer. And now we had another problem. Suddenly we were surrounded by huge boulders floating through space.
"Asteroids," Ms. Frizzle said. "Big ones. Hold on, everyone! Looks like we're in for a bumpy ride."
Boulders came rushing at us as the Friz wildly punched buttons on the instrument panel. The bus zigged right, then zagged left, narrowly missing a huge asteroid. "Aha!" Ms. Frizzle cried. "Gotcha!" She didn't look scared. 
"Look out, Ms. Frizzle!" Ralphie called. "There's another giant rock ahead!"
"Don't worry, Ralphie," Ms. Frizzle said.
"I'm getting the hang of this now." The bus dodged the giant asteroid and slipped between two smaller ones.
"We'll never get away from the comet at this speed!" Arnold complained. "Are any of these asteroids large enough for us to land on, Ms. Frizzle?"
"Good thinking, Arnold, " the Friz said. "Here's one that should do."
Ms. Frizzle set the space-bus down on the bumpy surface of the large asteroid. We made it just in time. A second later the comet sped by above us. It grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared in the dark beyond.
"That was awesome!" Tim said when the comet was gone.
"That was scary." Arnold said. Where are we, Ms. Frizzle?" I asked. "How much further to Mars?"
Ms. Frizzle pulled out her map of the solar system. "We were so busy getting away from the comet, we skipped right past it, I'm afraid, " she said. "We're now in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. We'll have to backtrack a few million miles. No problem." Mr. Frizzle fired the rockets to turn the bus back toward Mars, but there was a strange grinding sound.
"Uh-oh," Ms. Frizzle said. "The rocket controls are not responding. I can't shut the rockets off or turn the bus around."
"I'm not surprised, " Keesha said. "Nothing is going right on this trip."
The space-bus left the asteroid belt and headed farther into space.
Ms. Frizzle tried to cheer us up. "I'm sure we'll be able to figure out how to fix the rockets. In the meantime, we're on a course for Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system. I've always wanted to visit the outer planets."
Out of Sight!
The outer planets are the planets in our solar system that are farthest from the sun -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
According to the distance gauge on the instrument panel, we were more than three hundred million miles from Earth.
"That means we're more than four hundred million miles from the sun, " Ms. Frizzle said. "There's not much heat or light this far out. The rocket controls could be frozen. I'll have to go into the engine room and check them out?" She grabbed a flashlight and headed for the tunnel at the back of the bus that led to the engine room.
We all looked at one another. "What's going to happen if Ms. Frizzle can't fix the rockets?" Keesha asked.
"I don't want to think about it, " said Ralphie.
Arnold pointed his finger at me. "This is all your fault, Carlos, " he said. "We're in this mess because of that robot thing you brought along."
"Go easy on Carlos, " Tim said. "It was my fault that Rocco blasted off the moon."
"Stop arguing!" Phoebe begged. "I'm sure Ms. Frizzle will take care of everything." "Hey, look!" D. A. called. "There's Jupiter! I can see the Great Red Spot?"
We forgot about the rocket trouble as we crowded around the windows to see Jupiter. It was an amazing sight, with gray, brown, blue, and orange stripes all around it.
And Jupiter is windy, too. 
"Everything about Jupiter is super-sized. " he went on. "It weighs as much as 318 Earths! It has sixteen moons -- four of them are larger than planets. But they're moons because they orbit Jupiter, not the sun."
"Well, we're all going to be in supersized trouble if Ms. Frizzle doesn't get the rockets fixed fast, " Arnold said. "We're passing Jupiter and going even farther into space."
Just then Ms. Frizzle came out of the tunnel. She gave us the bad news. "The heating coils that warm the rocket controls are out, " she reported. "It looks like one of the main heat valves is frozen shut."
Keesha shook her head. "We're in for it now, " she said. "If we can't turn around, the space-bus will keep on going, out past Uranus and Neptune and Pluto... out of the solar system. Oh dear, oh dear... oh dear..."
"Not to worry, Keesha, " Ms. Frizzle said.
"We'll just have to open the valve by hand. There must be a tool we can use around here somewhere." She pulled out a large equipment locker and we all started searching through it.
In the meantime, the bus was hurtling through space. We stopped the search to take a look at the planet Saturn.
"Saturn is really big," Arnold said.
"It's the second-largest planet," Phoebe told him. She was excited. This was her planet.
"Next to Earth, I think Saturn is the most beautiful planet in the solar system, " she said. "Look at those rings that go around the planet -- there are thousands of them." We watched as Saturn and its biggest moon, called Titan, grew farther and farther away. Even Tim was getting worried now. (Even I was getting worried now.) In space, there is no air to cause friction to stop a moving object. If we didn't get the rockets working, we'd fly out of our solar system into deep space. We'd keep going forever and ever. We'd be lost in space!
"Hooray!" Ms. Frizzle yelled. She pulled a wrench out of the equipment box. "I'll have that fuel valve opened before you can say 'Frizolar system'!"
While Ms. Frizzle was in the engine room, we came upon another planet surrounded by rings. It was a beautiful blue-green color, but there was something really weird about it.
"Hey, that's my planet -- Uranus!" Wanda exclaimed. "See how it looks like it's on its side?" she said. "All the other planets are tilted slightly as they orbit the sun, but Uranus leans way over. It sure looks topsy-turvy."
"You'd be topsy-turvy, too, if you were stuck this far out in space, " I told Wanda. "We're more than one and a half billion miles from home!"
The bus seemed to be going faster and faster. We zipped past Uranus and onward toward Neptune. Where was Ms. Frizzle?
Even though we had the jitters, we couldn't help oohing and aahing as we passed the icy blue Neptune.
"Hey, " Ralphie said, "it's my planet. It looks just like a marble."
Then we were all surprised to find out that Pluto, the smallest planet in the solar system, isn't always the farthest planet from the sun.
"Sometimes Pluto's orbit brings it closer to the sun than Neptune is, " Ralphie told us. He had done his report on both planets. "But now Pluto is back in its usual place."
At last Ms. Frizzle came out of the engine room. "It looks like I'm going to need some help with that valve, " she said. "Carlos, come along with me. You're good at fixing things."
I started to follow Ms. Frizzle into the tunnel. Then I heard something behind me. "Yip, yip, yip! " Rocco was right on my heels.
"I think he wants to come, too, " I said. I picked him up and crawled into the tunnel after the Friz. 
Once we were in the engine room, Ms. Frizzle turned to me with a frown. "I didn't want to say anything in front of the others," she said, "but we have a problem. I can see the stuck valve all right, but I can't reach it. My hand is too big to fit through the opening around the valve. I thought your hand might fit."
She leaned over and pointed her flashlight at the opening. It was close to the floor and very small. There was no way I could get my hand inside.
Suddenly Rocco started rolling around in a circle. "Yip, yip, yip,', he barked. His tail wagged back and forth.
"You know something, Ms. Frizzle, " I said. "Rocco's mechanical arm would fit in there easily. I used the remote to close his built-in arm around the valve. Rocco's motor might be strong enough to twist the valve open."
"Give it a try!" said the Friz. "This playful pup of yours might turn out to be a hero after all."
We held our breath as I pushed the button to activate Rocco's arm. We heard a whirring noise, then a clank as the scoop clamped around the valve. The motor slowed down for a moment -- then purred back to life. "Did it work?" I asked.
Ms. Frizzle put her hand up to the heating coils. "They're getting warm, all right!" Ms. Frizzle beamed. "Three cheers for Rocco and Carlos."
A short while later, all the rockets were back on line. The bus made a wide arc and turned around Pluto and Charon.
"Mars or bust!" the Friz exclaimed. She fired the main rockets, and we were out of there!
We made it safely through the asteroid belt and headed for Mars.
As we sped along, we flew through bands of tiny particles. "Meteoroids," Ms. Frizzle explained, "space dust left behind when comets pass. Every day one thousand pounds of the stuff falls to Earth."
"No wonder my room is always dusty," Arnold said.
Soon we could see a warm reddish sphere in front of us.
"Well, what do you know?" Ralphie said. "Mars really is red." He sounded disappointed that it wasn't green.
When we got closer, we could see hazy white clouds wrapped around the planet.
"Mars may be red," Ms. Frizzle said, "but it's not red-hot. Those clouds are frozen carbon dioxide and ice. You'll be glad to have your insulated space suits on when we go out exploring."
The space-bus landed in a wide valley. There were tall red cliffs all around. The sky looked orange.
"Mars is only half the size of Earth," I pointed out as we put on our space suits, "but some of its volcanoes and canyons can make ours look puny."
The dusty orange-red ground outside the space-bus looked like a desert covered with rocks of all sizes. I could hardly wait to turn Rocco loose out there.
We climbed off the bus. I felt fifty pounds lighter than usual. That's because Martian gravity is only a third as strong as Earth's. A person who weighs seventy-five pounds on Earth is only twenty-five pounds on Mars.
"Wow!" I said. "There are some fantastic rocks around here." In fact, the ground was covered with rocks. Most of them were too big for Rocco to handle. Then I spotted an area filled with smaller pieces of rock.
Perfect! I thought. I pointed Rocco in that direction. "Go get them!" I said, and pushed the remote.
I couldn't believe my eyes. Rocco took off like lightning -- much faster than he'd ever gone before.
What's with this remote? I wondered. I pushed the stop button, but Rocco kept on going. He zipped right past the small rocks and headed out toward a boulder in the distance.
"Help!" I called. "This remote has gone wacky! Rocco is running away!" The other kids heard me on their helmet radios. "He went that way, " I said. We all took off after the runaway robot, making great leaping strides.
"Hurry!" I yelled. "We'll lose him!"
When we got to the boulder, we could see the tracks of Rocco's wheels leading to the edge of a small crater.
I started to run toward the crater when Tim yelled, "Hold it, Carlos. We've got to get out of here... Look!"
We turned to see what he was pointing at: a huge column of dust whirling up from the ground.
"It's a dust devil, " I yelled, "a Martian tornado!"
At the word tornado, everyone turned and took off for the space-bus.
I knew that the dust devil was dangerous -- the high winds stirred up tons of dust. When I did my report, I had read that dust devils were slow-moving storms. I hoped it was true. I had to find Rocco.
I slid down the side of the crater and followed Rocco's tracks. The sky seemed to be turning pink. I looked up and saw the top of the dust devil. It was coming my way!
"Rocco, where are you?" I called. The tracks led to a pile of rocks. I stopped in amazement. There was Rocco, dragging his scoop along the rocky ground. In one quick movement, he emptied a scooper full of red chunks into his rock pocket. With a wag of his tail, the mechanical arm folded up and the rock pocket closed.
There was no time to spare. I grabbed my rockhound, tucked him under my arm, and climbed out of the crater as fast as I could go. The dust devil was right behind me as I raced to the waiting bus!
Ms. Frizzle opened the door. "Good to see you -- and Rocco, " she said. "I was just about to send out a search party. When that dust devil hits, we won't be able to see a thing."
I buckled myself into my seat and held Rocco in my lap. Everyone else was already buckled up.
In a second, the space-bus lifted off. We rose higher and higher above the red planet. We could see the dust storm spreading out above the planet's surface.
"I hope we can come back someday, " I said. "I have a feeling there is a lot more to learn about Mars."
The next day, Ms. Frizzle took us back to the solar system -- but this time we didn't have to leave the classroom. She had put our reports up on the bulletin board so we could revisit the planets whenever we felt like it. Only one was missing.
"Okay, Carlos, " Ms. Frizzle said. "Where's your report on Mars?"
"I think Rocco has it, " I said. I pushed a button on the remote and Rocco came rolling into the room. (I had left him out in the hallway. It was part of a big surprise I had planned.)
"Yip, yip, yip" Rocco beeped as he came up to me. He had my report in his mouth.
The kids laughed. "Hey, Rocco, how's it going?" Ralphie said. "Seen any dust devils lately?"
I pinned my report up on the board. "Now," I said, "prepare to be amazed." I opened the rock pocket on Rocco's back. "Ta-da! Rocco the Rockhound Robot has returned with real Martian rocks!"
I took out a handful of small red chunks and passed them around for everyone to see.
"Are these really from Mars?" asked Arnold.
"They sure are!" I said. "I saw Rocco scoop them up with my own eyes."
"Unbelievable!" Tim said. "I guess he really is a rockhound at heart."
"Yip, yip!" Rocco said. No doubt about it.
It was field trip day for our class. And a field trip with our teacher, Ms. Frizzle, is always... well, an experience!
We were going to the beach. Ms. Frizzle had asked us to work in teams of two and to bring in beach things that go together.
Phoebe brought dune grass, and Ralphie brought a yellow balloon. "It's the sun," he said. "The sun makes the grass grow.
Wanda brought a mussel, and Tim brought a rock for it to live on.
But Keesha had forgotten about the beach things. "Oh, no! Oh, bad! Oh, bad, bad!" moaned Keesha. "All I brought was my beach towel and a tuna fish sandwich for lunch!"
Just then, Arnold walked in. His shoes squeaked when he walked.
"Arnold! My dear partner!" said Keesha. "Did you by any chance bring two beach things that go together? I forgot about our report."
Arnold groaned. "Aargh! I forgot, too!" he said. "I was in such a hurry this morning that I ran all the way here and kind of stepped in the pond by our house. I didn't have time to change. So all I have is my bathing suit and a towel..."
Keesha and Arnold felt terrible. "How can we do our report?" said Arnold.
Keesha looked at her tuna fish sandwich. "We'll just have to work with what we have," she said. She looked at the green scum on Arnold's shoes. 'There must be a way for a tuna sandwich and green scum to go together. Think!"
"Good morning, class!" Ms. Frizzle said. "Today is beach day. Let's hear some of your beach reports. She looked around the room.
Keesha and Arnold tried to look small.
"Keesha and Arnold!" Ms. Frizzle said brightly. 'Tell us about your two beach things that go together."
Keesha stood up. "Well... Arnold and I brought this nutritious tuna fish sandwich and..." Keesha gulped. She grabbed Arnold's slimy shoe. "And this delightful green scum!" We all held our breaths, waiting to see what the Friz would say.
Ms. Frizzle smiled. "Fantastic!" she said. "Please go on! Tell us why a tuna sandwich and green scum belong -- " A loud beep interrupted Ms. Frizzle. "Sorry! Hold that thought! It's time for our field trip."
We all piled onto the Magic School Bus and fastened our seat belts.
"Off we go!" said Ms. Frizzle. "Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside! I hope you all brought your bathing suits."
The Friz smiled. The best way to learn about something is to jump right in," she said. "So hold on tightly, class!"
"Does that mean what I think it means?" asked Arnold.
And then it jumped up and into the water, just like a dolphin.
Diving through the water, we could see seaweed all around us. "What are those beautiful, spiny rocks?" asked Tim.
"They're animals -- sea urchins!" answered the Friz. "They eat seaweed." As we watched, a sea otter swam by and grabbed one of the sea urchins.
"And I guess otters eat the sea urchins," said Ralphie.
"Otters eat urchins, urchins eat seaweed," said Ms. Frizzle. "See the connections?"
"I can't see anything through this green stuff," said Keesha. "It's all scummy out there."
"Did you say scummy?" Arnold asked. 'That's it! Look, Keesha! Scum!"
Ms. Frizzle looked pleased. "Shall we take a closer look?" she asked.
Ms. Frizzle pressed a button, and. suddenly, we were shrinking. "There we go!" she said. "We are now as tiny as the green phytoplankton."
That's seriously tiny!" whispered Tim.
"Class, please put on the specially designed underwater breathing masks that you will find under your seats. Then off we go! Remember, look for connections!" said the Friz as she opened the door of the bus.
"According to my research, phytoplankton live in the part of the ocean near the surface that gets sunlight," explained Dorothy Ann.
"Look at me!" said Dorothy Ann as she rode on one of the phytoplankton. Just then, a much bigger creature floated by and ate the phytoplankton out from under her. "Yikes!" she yelled. "Look out, everyone! We're the right size to be somebody's food."
Just in time, the Magic School Bus swam by and grabbed us in a net. "All aboard," called Ms. Frizzle. "As I always say, it's better to be in the bus than in someone else!"
"Quick, let's get big!" begged Arnold.
"No sooner said than done," answered Ms. Frizzle. And with a spin and a whoosh, we grew to the size of the thing that had just tried to eat us. Ms. Frizzle said it is called zooplankton.
Whew! We're safe!" said Arnold.
We looked out at the strange creatures floating around us. "Look at these guys," said Carlos.
"They are not 'guys,' they're zooplankton," said Wanda. "But what is that huge thing?" she asked, pointing to a fish that looked enormous to us.
"That is an anchovy, Wanda," said Ms. Frizzle.
Ralphie shuddered. His dad ate salty anchovies on pizza. Now that yucky fish wanted to eat him!
Ms. Frizzle pressed a yellow button, and we felt ourselves growing again. In a few seconds, we were as big as the anchovies.
Ms. Frizzle said, "I suggest we stay on the bus while we have our lunch."
Keesha took out her tuna sandwich.
"Don't eat our report!" said Arnold. "Here, have a potato chip."
Keesha looked at her sandwich. "I still don't get it. How is this sandwich connected with your scum, Arnold?" she asked. Arnold shrugged. "Tuna fish is just tuna fish," he said. Keesha looked amazed. "Brilliant, Arnold!" she said. "Get it? It's like a chain. The scum is phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are eaten by zooplankton. Zooplankton are eaten by anchovies. And anchovies are eaten by bigger fish like -- "TUNA!" yelled Arnold, looking out the window.
Suddenly, everything went dark. The bus bounced against something and came to a stop. "Where are we?" someone yelled.
Ms. Frizzle turned on the lights. "Class," she announced, "we are now inside an albacore tuna."
Keesha was excited. "This is great, Arnold!" she said. "Now we know how your green scum is connected to my sandwich!" Keesha raised her hand. "Ms. Frizzle!" she called. "May we go back to school now? Arnold and I are ready to give our report!" Ms. Frizzle smiled. "Certainly! Hold still, everyone. Here comes our chance!"
At last we could see daylight. The bus was in the tuna's mouth... and the tuna's mouth was headed for a fishhook! "Seat belts, please." called Ms. Frizzle, and she pulled a lever. A clamp shot out from the Magic School Bus and fastened us onto the fishhook. We were caught! We flew through the air as someone reeled us in.
A huge face peered at us as we dangled from the fishing line. "Another school bus!" the fisherwoman said thoughtfully. "Second one today. Back it goes!" She unhooked the bus and tossed us back into the ocean.
"We're a keeper!" yelled Arnold, but it was too late. The bus landed back in the water with a splash.
"Never fear, Arnold," said the Friz as she pressed another button on the dashboard.
"When in the surf, do as the surfers do!" Ms. Frizzle yelled over the sound of the waves. And before we knew it, we were surfing back to shore on the back of the Magic School Bus.
Back at school, Arnold and Keesha finally gave their report. "It's like a chain, with everything connected, said Arnold. "Tiny plants -- like the scum on my shoe -- are eaten by zooplankton. The zooplankton are eaten by anchovies "The anchovies are eaten by tuna fish," continued Keesha. "And, last of all, the tuna fish is eaten by ME! I guess that puts me at the top of this food chain, and am I ever hungry!
"Excellent report on an ocean food chain!" exclaimed Ms. Frizzle. "What about a land food chain?"
"Well, a mouse eats grass seed," said Tim. "Then a snake might eat the mouse."
"And a hawk eats the snake!" finished Wanda. "The hawk is at the top of that food chain."
"Correct!" said Ms. Frizzle as she drew on the board. "And plants are at the bottom of almost every food chain."
It was time to go home. Arnold put on his scummy shoe.
"Nature amazes me," he said.
"So does Ms. Frizzle!" said Keesha, and we all laughed -- even Ms. Frizzle.
When the Magic School Bus is eaten by a tuna, it becomes part of a food, chain a series of living things dependent upon one another for food.
Plants, which create food using energy from the sun, are at the bottom of almost every food chain. Herbivores eat plants, and carnivores eat herbivores.
Humans are at the top of many food chains. Encourage children to think about the food chains to which they belong and about how living things depend on one another. That morning we were trying to put together an enormous globe. But we didn't have all the pieces, so the whole thing fell apart.
"Carlos," said Dorothy Ann, her nose in the instruction book, "if you spent more time on research, you would know how to put this globe together!"
Carlos dusted himself off. "And if you didn't spend so much time doing research, you could have helped!" he answered.
Ms. Frizzle looked over the mess. "I'm afraid you can't put that globe together until you have all the pieces." she told us. "You see, there's an island so new, it hasn't been discovered yet!"
"How can there be a new island?" asked Phoebe. "The earth never changes. Does it?"
"The earth is changing all the time," said Ms. Frizzle. "Right under your very feet."
We all looked down at our feet, but nothing was moving.
How can it have a name?
It hasn't even been discovered
Dorothy Ann wanted to find clues to the island in her books. But Carlos wanted us to search for the mystery island. That way we could name it!
"What an explosive idea!" said Ms. Frizzle happily. "To the bus!"
Oh, no! Not another field trip!
"This is your captain speaking." announced Ms Frizzle when we settled onboard. "On behalf of my night crew, I want to thank you for flying the Magic School Bus "
We knew what that meant! Quickly we fastened our seat belts. Then we put our seats in an upright position.
Why does this always happen?
The Magic School Bus began to spin and stretch and pull. The next thing we knew, we were high in the air!
We'll name it Carlos Island,
Soon we were flying over the ocean. The sky grew dark, and big black clouds floated past.
"The island should be arriving any minute now!" announced Ms. Frizzle.
How could an island just arrive? we wondered. But then thunder boomed and lightning streaked across the sky. The ocean beneath us bubbled like a pot of boiling water. From out of nowhere, a blanket of dark ash covered our windows.
"Prepare to land!" shouted Ms. Frizzle.
"Of course we'll get them," agreed Ms. Frizzle. "Prepare to dive, class."
Everyone climbed back onto the bus. Then the Friz pressed a button and the Magic School Bus twisted into a submarine.
Carlos decided to stay on the raft. He wanted to be the First to spot the new island. Arnold stayed, too -- but for another reason. He'd already had enough of our field trip.
We waved good-bye while Carlos, Arnold, and Liz buckled up their life jackets. "Batten down the hatches," the Friz called loudly, and down, down, down we went.
Wow! We couldn't believe what we saw. A huge under water mountain!
Dorothy Ann spotted her bookbag right away. It floated past the window on its way to the ocean floor and landed next to an old shipwreck.
Can I get a burger to go with this shake?
We're in trouble now!
The bus scrunched up tight. Then it shot us out like a cannon. Good thing we had on special diving suits!
Dorothy Ann swam over to her bookbag. But the strap was looped around the tentacle of a giant squid! "Ahhh!" Dorothy Ann screamed. The squid was swimming away. "It's got my bag!'
Just then the ocean floor began to tremble. The ship started to shake. And we heard a loud rumbling noise.
EARTHQUAKE!
We were so surprised, we didn't even see Dorothy Ann's bookbag when it floated past, pushed upward by the gas bubbles.
The bubbles floated to the top of the sea. Pop! The bubbles burst, letting out a terrible smell.
"Look!" cried Carlos as he snatched up Dorothy Ann's bookbag. "Maybe we can find out what's going on by reading Dorothy Ann's books."
Meanwhile, the Friz was trying to cheer up Dorothy Ann. "There's more than one way to discover an island," she said brightly.
So we all dived deeper into the ocean. Brrr. it was getting cold. Even the bus shivered!
Then we noticed something strange. There were funny-looking chimneys in the ground. And they were warm. Phoebe poked her head in close and -- poof! -- got a face full of soot!
Keesha swam over to a deep canyon in the ocean floor. It was shaped like a V. "Maybe D. A.'s books fell down there," she said.
"There's only one way to find out," said Ms. Frizzle. We swam back to the bus, and soon we were heading down into the canyon.
Rumble, rumble. Another earthquake hit! At the bottom of the canyon the rocky floor began to slide right underneath another plate. Above us, the ocean waves grew rougher. But Carlos barely noticed. He was too busy reading.
"It says right here the earth's surface is made up of layered crustlike plates of rock that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle," he told Arnold. "These plates move very very slowly. But sometimes one plate slides under another one. When it slides, we can actually feel the earth move."
That's what the canyon was -- two giant plates of rock. They were sliding together, creating an earthquake. And leave it to Ms. Frizzle to squeeze us right between them!
The Magic School Bus shuddered and groaned and grunted. It stretched like a looooong, thin rubber band. And so did we!
As one plate shoved under the other, we squeezed in between. Now we oozed through hot, swirling liquid deep beneath the earth.
"It's so hot," said Keesha, fanning herself. "The rocks in the crust are melting!"
Melted rock is called magma," explained Ms. Frizzle.
Dorothy Ann wrinkled her nose. She was trying to figure it all out. She remembered the chimneys and the heat under the ocean floor, the earthquakes and the mountain. "We're under an underwater volcano!" she shouted.
Geysers shot up to the sky. Water hissed all around the raft. The rumbling noise grew louder, and Carlos waved hi! book excitedly. He'd figured out the very same thing!
Bingo, Dorothy Ann. And you figured it out by yourself.
According to my research, we're floating above a volcano!
Under the volcano, the magma pushed us up, up, up. Soon we were rising up in a big blob of boiling hot bubbles.
"Welcome to the magma chamber," said Ms. Frizzle grandly. "The heart of the volcano."
The pressure grew stronger and stronger. The magma rose higher.
Ralphie gulped. "How do we get out of here?" he asked.
"Out of a volcano?" Ms. Frizzle repeated. "How do you suppose?"
Dorothy Ann was too excited to be scared. "When all this magma shoots up and hits the air, it will cool down. Right?" she asked Ms. Frizzle.
"Absolutely," said Ms. Frizzle.
"And when it cools, it will harden into rock" "Eventually," Ms. Frizzle agreed.
"And the new rock will build up the top of this =,*
Dorothy Ann continued, "until it sticks oul of the water, will be a brand-new island!"
"Yessss!" shouted the Friz. 
Just then we shot up through the bubbling magma like a rocket-ship. Higher... higher... closer to the top... Clunk! We jolted to a stop.
"Oh, no!" cried Dorothy Ann. "We've stopped rising." "Something must be plugging up the volcano!" said Keesha.
"And the magma's squeezing us!" Phoebe exclaimed.
Carlos had no idea we were in such a tight spot. He still had his head buried in Dorothy Ann's books. "A lot of stuff is blown out of a volcano when it erupts," he told Arnold. "Volcanic ash and dust and rocks..."
Just then volcanic ash and dust and rocks rained down.
"And then lava," Carlos finished triumphantly. "Put it all together and you get -- "
"Out of here!" Arnold exclaimed in a panic.
"No!" Carlos corrected. "You get Carlos Island!"
Kapow! The plug popped out. The magma boiled into glowing clouds of ash and rock. Then it all billowed out with a rush of steam.
What a sight! Red-hot lava poured down the sides of the volcano. The volcano grew bigger and bigger...
It was an island!
Wheee! We landed -- plop! -- into the raft. Then the volcano belched one last time and the Magic School Bus whooshed into the air. A parachute opened, and the bus drifted down to a soft landing on the water.
"To Carlos Island!" said Carlos as we rowed over to the brand-new island. "I discovered it with the help of Dorothy Ann's books."
"Carlos Island? You mean Dorothy Ann Island," Dorothy Ann corrected. "I discovered it. And. for once, I didn't need my books."
But someone else had landed there first. Liz!
So when Carlos and Dorothy Ann decided to write a book about their experiences, they knew exactly what to call it.
"Lizard Island by Carlos and Dorothy Ann!" said Carlos. Don't you mean Lizard Island by Dorothy Ann and Carlos?" said Dorothy Ann.
Dear Dorothy Ann, Where did you buy your bookbag? You obviously have the latest in waterproof accessories!
Dear Carlos,
I thought your book was a blast! But according to my research, it takes a lot longer than a few minutes for a volcano to grow from an undersea mountain into an island. Also, I don't think you should go wandering around inside a volcano, hang around one when it is erupting, or walk on lava right after the eruption. That would be too dangerous!
Memo to: Parents, Teachers, and Kids
This book describes how one underwater volcano can become an island. Sometimes two big pieces of the earth's crust -- called plates -- slide into one another, creating tremendous heat and pressure, melting the rock. The melted rock is magma. Over time, gases in the magma create pressure. Eventually that pressure blows the top off the volcano and the magma shoots out. As lava and dust and rocks flow out, they cover the volcano, layer by layer, until it breaks the ocean surface and makes an island! A volcano on land works the same as one in the sea. But there are different types of volcanoes. Some form where plates pull apart. Others form over hot spots in the crust.
P. S. There's never a fire in a volcano. There's only heat, so water can't put it out. Being in Ms. Frizzle's class is always surprising. She has a way of turning everything into an exciting adventure -- even picking a name for our class soccer team!
We had exactly six hours before the biggest soccer game of the year, and we still didn't have a name -- or a mascot -- for our team.
"We need a mascot that's different!" said Keesha.
"It has to be so surprising the other team won't know what hit them!" added Carlos.
Quick, let's find someplace to hide!
Phoebe glanced at the book in her hand. It was all about butterflies and moths. "I got it!" she shouted with delight.
We were all excited. "What? WHAT?" we asked her.
Phoebe spread her arms out like wings. "The Walker Elementary BUTTERFLIES!"
Suddenly we weren't so excited.
"You want to name our soccer team the Butterflies?" Ralphie asked. He sounded disgusted.
"And have a mascot that's small..." added Wanda.
"And swattable..." continued Tim.
"And beautiful?" Keesha finished in disbelief. "We want to be a tough, talented team, not a pretty team."
Just then, Arnold's know-it-all cousin, Janet, climbed down from the bleachers to join us.
I am your favorite cousin, right, Arnold?
Suddenly we were surprised by Ms. Frizzle. Flapping wings, she glided down from the ceiling. And she was dressed in a butterfly costume!
"A crafty question, Arnold," she said. "Anyone know what a Bog Beast looks like? Janet?"
Janet's face turned beet red. "Well, it's, ah, probably, ah..."
Dorothy Ann pulled out her notebook. "According to my research, a bog is wet, soggy ground, like a swamp."
That was when Ms. Frizzle got that time-for-a-field-trip look in her eyes. "Seems to me, then," she said, "a swamp's the place to find a Bog Beast! To the swamp!"
Does the swamp have butterflies, too?
We all climbed aboard the Magic School Bus and fastened our seat belts. We weren't surprised when the bus turned off the main highway and onto a small dirt road. We weren't surprised when it drove into a misty forest, either. We weren't even surprised when the bus went right into a swamp, gurgled, gargled, and... turned into a swamp boat. When you're in Ms. Frizzle's class, you get used to things like that.
The bus skimmed across the top of the swamp water.
All around us we saw trees and flowers.
"What is this place, Ms. Frizzle?" asked Dorothy Ann.
"It's called Butterfly Bog," replied Ms. Frizzle.
Just then a swarm of beautiful yellow butterflies took off from a branch. A blue jay flew down and snatched one of the butterflies in its beak.
"Some mascot," said Janet. "If a blue jay can do that, what will the Bulldogs do to your soccer team?" The Bulldogs were the team we were supposed to play.
The bus stopped at a small, moss-covered island. "Here we are, announced Ms. Frizzle. "Bog Beast Landing."
This was getting really exciting! Soon we'd probably see a real, live Bog Beast! Carlos covered the bus with moss so it blended in with the surroundings. That way, the Bog Beast wouldn't be afraid to come close to us. We stayed very still and waited.
"According to my research, the best way to catch something is to use some kind of bait," whispered Dorothy Ann.
And Janet knew exactly what kind of bait was best. She smiled and picked up her butterfly net. "Like the biggest, juiciest butterfly in the bog-she said. She jumped off the bus and onto the island.
Janet's idea to catch a butterfly really upset Phoebe. "Janet, why don't you pick on someone your own size?" she shouted after her.
Ms. Frizzle thought that was a great idea. She reached under the dashboard and pulled out her portashrinker machine. She aimed the machine at Janet and Liz and pushed the button. She was going to shrink them! A light flashed. A loud bell rang.
Unfortunately, the portashrinker rays bounced right off the shiny metal charm that Liz wore around her neck. The rays came right back toward the bus! The next thing we knew, we -- not Janet and Liz -- were two inches high! Worst of all, the portashrinker had landed in the water. It was too wet to work! That's when we heard Ms. Frizzle say something we thought we'd never hear Whoops," she said. 'This wasn't supposed to happen."
"I don't care how small I am," declared Phoebe. I've got butterflies to save!" She raced off to make sure the butterflies stayed away from Janet and Liz.
Then we heard a scream. We ran to Phoebe's rescue.
She was staring eye-to-eye with a long, snakelike monster. The monster seemed to be licking its chops. It looked hungry.
Even Ralphie was scared. "Okay, we've seen a Bog Beast, he said.
"Now let's get out of here."
Ralphie tried to run off, but Ms. Frizzle pulled him back. "Not so fast, Ralphie," she said calmly. "Since you've never seen a Bog Beast, how can you be sure this is a Bog Beast?"
"It looks more like a snake to me," said Wanda.
"Except it doesn't move like a snake," Phoebe pointed out. "It moves like a caterpillar."
"Hey, it is a caterpillar," agreed-Tim.
"A caterpillar pretending to be a snake," Carlos added.
Just then, a large green praying mantis landed in front of the caterpillar. It stood on its hind legs, blocking the caterpillar's path. The praying mantis was looking for lunch.
"Won't a praying mantis eat a caterpillar?" Dorothy Ann asked Tim.
The caterpillar reared up, wagged its head, and flicked something that looked like a tongue. The praying mantis hopped away quickly.
"Not if the praying mantis thinks the caterpillar is a snake," answered Tim.
"I get it!" Carlos shouted. 'That caterpillar tricked its enemy by pretending to be something it isn't!"
Then Wanda remembered we were still looking for a name for our soccer team. "What if we call our team the Walker Elementary Caterpillars.
"We'll get laughed out of the game!" answered Ralphie.
"Besides, if we don't get back soon, there won't be any game!"
But that wasn't our only problem. We still had to stop Janet from catching the butterflies. There was no way we were going to let her feed them to the Beast.
"It's just not fair, Ms, Frizzle," sobbed Phoebe as we watched Janet swing net at a black-and-orange butterfly.
"I know." Ms. Frizzle smiled. "Janet doesn't stand a chance."
What did the Friz mean by that?
Janet lifted her net and grinned. 'This one's a real juicy one." she told Liz. But just as Janet tried to capture the butterfly, it seemed to disappear.
"Okay, wise guy, where are you?" Janet called out.
"You're mine, wimp!" Janet called to the butterfly. She lifted her net up in the air, and Liz fell off Janet's shoulder. Splash! Liz landed in the mud. In all the confusion, the butterfly flew away.
A big wave of brown mud washed over us. "Swamp swill!" yelled Carlos.
Arnold had had enough. "That's it!" he said. "I'm unshrinking us before Jumbo Janet crushes us all." Nothing happened.
Then we heard a bell ring.
"What's that?" Arnold asked. He sounded a little nervous.
"The dew-dinger," explained Ms. Frizzle.
Ms. Frizzle handed a blow-dryer to Arnold. "Start drying," she said. Just then, we heard a loud scream.
That's Janet!" Arnold told us. "I'd know that scream anywhere."
We tried to run and help her. But we were stopped in our tracks by a huge flash of black-and-yellow stripes! We were so surprised, we completely forgot about Janet.
"Bog Beast!" Ralphie yelled.
Dorothy Ann looked at the black-and-yellow stripes. Then she looked at the butterfly and moth book. "It's not a Bog Beast," she said. "It's a zebra butterfly."
Ralphie blushed. "Well, it, uh... it just startled me with all its colors, that's all."
"See? Even though butterflies are small and pretty, they're not wimps! Phoebe told Ralphie. 'They trick you. They hide from you. They even scare you! That's how they stay alive!"
Now everyone wanted our team to be the Walker Elementary Butterflies Except Ralphie. "Never!" he cried. "I'll play for the other team before anyone calls me a butterfly." And with that he walked away.
Before long, we heard Ralphie yell. We found him hiding behind the root of a mangrove tree. "It's a... it's a... "
Wanda laughed at Ralphie. "Yeah, we know. It's a Bog Beast."
Wanda looked up. Two huge black eyes stared back down at her. All of sudden, Wanda wasn't laughing anymore. Nobody was!
"Bog Beast!" we all cried out at once.
But it wasn't a Bog Beast at all. It was a buckeye butterfly. Those eyes aren't real," Phoebe pointed out. They just look like eyes to fool the enemy."
Butterflies were pretty tricky, and surprising -- just the things we wanted our soccer team to be!
My, what big eyespots you have!
All the better to fool you with, my dear!
"Okay. Phoebe, you win," Ralphie said. "We 11 be the Walker Elementary Butterflies!"
Phoebe led us all in a cheer. "Let's take our team to the skies!" she shouted.
"Let's be Walker Elementary Butterflies," we cheered back.
A big smile flashed across Ms. Frizzle's face. "If you insist," she said.
We heard a loud whirring sound. The next thing we knew, we were flying around in the Magic School Busserfly!
The Magic School Busserfly spread its wings and took off. It made a low humming sound as it flew.
"So what do you think, class?" Ms. Frizzle asked us as we came in for a landing.
"It's certainly a new sensation," answered Dorothy Ann.
Just then, a giant face appeared in front of us. And it didn't seem friendly!
"What a field trip," said Arnold as he bounced down into his seat, He landed right on top of the portashrinker. Presto! The Magic School Bus changed back to its real size.
Janet spotted the bus and ran to us. I saw the Bog Beast! she shouted.
"Did it look anything like this butterfly?" Tim asked. He showed her a picture that he had drawn of our bus as a butterfly.
Boy, was Janet shocked to find out that we were the Bog Beast.
Ms. Frizzle explained that a Bog Beast can be whatever you want it to be In this case, it happened to be a Bog Beast Butterfly!
The Bulldogs couldn't believe it when they saw our mascot. But they were even more surprised when the Bog Beast Butterflies won the soccer game! Phoebe had been right all along. Butterflies weren't just small and beautiful. They were full of surprises!
As I always say, there's no surprise like butterflies!
A Note to Teachers, Parents, and Kids
The beauty, color, and variety of butterflies and moths have always fascinated people. But, as you can imagine, life is not easy for these flying flowers. " Butterflies and moths seem so fragile -- especially against their enemies, many of whom are larger and stronger than they are.
But appearances can be deceiving! Just like other insects and animals, butterflies and moths have many deceptive and -unique ways to keep from being eaten. Many butterflies and moths use camouflage techniques to hide from their predators. Some, like the caterpillars of the longtailed skipper, simply hide out in rolled-up shelters made of leaves. Others, especially those with muted browns and greens in their wings, use their coloring to blend in with the surroundings. It also helps that butterflies and moths have an uncanny ability to stay very, very still. Their behavior and coloring work well together to convince predators that they're not really there!
What about those butterflies and moths with bright coloring? They can't blend in. So they try to trick their predators into going away. That's when eyespots come in handy. They can make a moth, butterfly, or caterpillar seem much bigger -- and more dangerous -- than it really is. And that's often enough to scare off an unsuspecting bird mammal, or snake!
If we've learned one thing in Ms. Frizzle's class, it is to be ready for anything. Ms. Frizzle is full of surprises. Today we are starting a new science unit about air pollution. We've learned about some far-out things with the Friz, but air pollution sounds like something to get choked up about.
We were just leaving the school when Ms. Frizzle gasped.
"I forgot my map!" our teacher exclaimed. "I'll go get it. Stay on the bus, kids."
But when Ms. Frizzle left, our bus started to shake.
We felt a jolt and heard a cough. GASP! HACK! WHEEZE! COUGH!
With each cough, the bus got smaller. We got as small as a dust particle and we saw lots of stuff in the air.
"Yuck! What is that?" Wanda asked.
"That's particulate matter from the buses," Dorothy Ann said. "It's usually way too small for us to see."
"But it pollutes the air and makes it dirty." Tim said.
"Oh, no!" Phoebe called, pointing out the front window. The wind blew us straight at Mr. Rivera, the crossing guard.
Mr. Rivera didn't know we were inside him!
"The nose hairs help filter out big particles from the air, so they don't go into your lungs," DA. tells us.
The bus was so tiny it slipped right through the hairs. We were headed down the windpipe.
Once we were in the lungs, we could see that Mr. Rivera had breathed in stuff other than air.
"Smaller particles can go even deeper into the lungs." D. A. told us.
The lungs started to exhale and we began to go faster than ever. A high-pitched sound rang through the bus. "It's a whistle!" Wanda yelled over the noise.
Mr. Rivera had blown his whistle, and we were shooting straight out into the air.
Our bus was still sputtering and wheezing. We went higher and higher with each cough.
"Look!" Tim called. "There's Ms. Frizzle. She's getting on a bus with Ms. Berk's class."
Then the wind blew us right past the Friz's window in Ms. Berk's bus. She was busy examining her map. She didn't seem to see us. But when she shook her keys, something funny happened to the bus.
The wind blew us to the front of Ms. Berk's bus. "Where are we going?" Keesha asked.
"According to my research." D. A. said as she looked in her book, "we're moving with the air into the engine of Ms. Berk's school bus."
"We're taking a trip through the bus's engine," D. A. told us. "Right now, we're in the engine block," she said and pointed to a picture in her book. "To get out, we need to follow the exhaust to the tailpipe."
"Look at us!" cried Wanda.
We were covered with bits of soot.
"We've left the engine block. Now we're in the exhaust system." D. A. explained. "Pollution and soot can be left after the fuel bums. We're all covered in particulate matter."
Exhaust was everywhere! It was extremely dirty.
"How will we find Ms. Frizzle?" Phoebe asked. Then we noticed that the exhaust was going into a special device. And we were going with it!
D. A. looked in her book. "My research shows that this niter traps almost all the particulate matter."
After we went through the filter, we were all clean again!
Then we heard a familiar voice. It was Ms. Frizzle.
"It's wonderful that you already had a filter put on your bus. Ms. Berk. I'm looking forward to having one put on my bus as well." the Friz said.
Suddenly, we were in an auto shop and we had on mechanics' outfits. Ms. Frizzle was there with a mechanic.
"Class, this is Mr. Spencer," said Ms. Frizzle. "He's going to put a filter on our bus that will clean the exhaust so the bus won't be sick anymore."
We all nodded. After our trip through the engine, we all knew how important Mr. Spencer's work was.
We helped Mr. Spencer install the particulate filter. Then we got ready to head back to school.
Vroom. vroom. The bus purred to life. We were glad the bus was healthy again.
Telephone: Ring! Ring!
Mr. Spencer: Spencer's! The bus mechanic you can trust!
Caller: Hello, Mr. Spencer? I'm not so sure people should trust you!
Mr. Spencer: That's ridiculous!
Caller: But you're in this book that says buses can shrink and fly...
Mr. Spencer: Okay, but...
Caller: And what about saying that kids can pass through a bus filter?
Mr. Spencer: We all know that can't really happen, but...
Caller: And I heard that you wear a wig!
Mr. Spencer: Now wait just a minute! My hair is all-natural!
Caller: It is? And what about the information in this book?
Mr. Spencer: That's all for real, too. Well, except for the shrinking and flying buses and kids passing through filters. Besides, this is a book about a MAGIC School Bus.
Caller: Huh. I guess you're trustworthy after all.
Mr. Spencer: You betcha!
It was time for our school's annual Fish Fry Picnic. Each class was assigned a food to bring. Most classes went on field trips to local farms to get their food.
But not Ms. Frizzle's class!
I've never seen a school bus float!
There sure is something fishy about it!
Our class does things a little differently! We like to try new things. Ask questions. Get messy. Or, in this case, get wet. We were out on the Magic School bus-boat, fishing for salmon in the middle of the ocean.
Unfortunately, there weren't any salmon around.
I don't get it. Last spring there were so many salmon here you wouldn't believe it.
My Uncle Brian and I saw tons of them!
It must be a monster.
We were getting nervous. If we didn't catch anything, the Fish Fry would be ruined!
"You promised fish, Ralphie, when you organized the picnic and the baseball game," Wanda insisted.
Ralphie's face turned red. "I know, I know," he answered. "Let's stick it out a little longer. We have to catch something."
Suddenly, Ralphie felt a big tug on his fishing line!
Ralphie had a big one on his line. It took all of us to pull it in. We tugged really hard. The bus-boat rocked back and forth. Water splashed high in the air. Finally we heard a thud. We'd done it! We'd pulled in a giant...
"I was just testing out our new fearsomely fast flippers, Ms. Frizzle explained. "And I have to say, they're fin-tastic!" Ralphie sighed. "I wish I could say the same thing about the fishing, Ms. Frizzle," he said. "But you're the only thing we've caught all day."
"Oh dear!" Ms. Frizzle replied. "Don't tell me there's a salmon famine when you've promised to feed the whole school fish?!"
Ms. Frizzle got that time-for-a-field-trip look in her eye. We followed her into the cabin of the Magic School bus-boat.
"Are you taking us home, Ms. Frizzle?" Ralphie asked.
"Let me put it this way, Ralphie. When your salmon have got up and gone, it's time to get up and go!" Ms. Frizzle exclaimed. "Hit it, Liz!"
Liz pulled down a lever on the dashboard. The bus-boat spun around in the open sea. Its headlights bulged like giant eyes. It grew fins and a tail! Obviously, the bus wasn't going back to school just yet.
But where was it going?!
"Actually, class, the bus hasn't turned into a real salmon,"
Ms. Frizzle told us as she popped a disk into a computer on the dashboard. "But with this new Microbus software, it will think it has! This disk programs the bus to have a brain and memory just like a salmon. It will go wherever your salmon went, Ralphie."
There were computer monitors all over the bus. 'Those are Microbus windows," Ms. Frizzle explained. 'They let us see what the bus is thinking."
The bus swam along. We all got up and looked at the different Microbus windows screens. Keesha sniffed at the smell station. "Don't you just love that salty-ocean smell!" she said.
Carlos and Dorothy Ann watched the screen at the sight station. That way they could see what the bus was seeing. Suddenly, a school of smaller fish appeared on the screen. The bus had spotted lunch! It opened its mouth wide to catch the fish.
Phoebe and Ralphie watched the screen at the taste station. As the bus swallowed the fish, a picture of small fish appeared on the screen.
"Over here, Ms. Frizzle," Arnold called as he watched a wavy line move across his screen. "Something weird is happening." "That's a pressure sensor," Ms. Frizzle explained. "It runs in a line along each side of the salmon-bus. The lines can feel even the tiniest movement in the water. That way the salmon can sense what it can't see with its eyes."
Ralphie looked worried. "Like things that might eat us?" he asked nervously.
Suddenly we spotted a huge fish with rows and rows of sharp teeth. It was heading right for us!
"Excuse me, Ms. Frizzle, but we're outta here! Ralphie cried. He raced to the dashboard, turned the steering wheel, and pressed his foot against the gas pedal.
Nothing happened.
"The gas pedal doesn't work and the steering wheel won't turn," Ralphie said.
"Of course not, Ralphie," Ms. Frizzle replied. "We're not in control anymore. The bus is. It's thinking like a salmon!"
"We're finished," Carlos declared.
The Magic School salmon-bus darted down deep into the ocean. It picked up speed and swam off. Phew! We'd just missed being lunch for a shark!
And speaking of lunch, Dorothy Ann spotted another school of tiny fish. "Hey, guys, it's feeding time again," she announced.
But this time the bus didn't stop for a snack. Instead, it joined up with a group of other salmon and kept on swimming.
Dorothy Ann flipped the pages of her notebook. "Wait a minute, she said. According to my research, when a salmon loses its appetite, starts swimming hard in one direction, and is joined by other salmon all going the same way, it's migrating!" "You mean like birds in the fall?" Keesha asked.
"It says here that some animals that migrate travel thousands of miles!" Dorothy Ann continued. "And it can take months." "Which means we might make it back in time for our senior picnic," Carlos added.
Ralphie jumped up excitedly. "I have a plan!" he said. "We'll just go outside and turn the bus around!"
Ms. Frizzle nodded and walked across the bus to a closet. She pulled out four pairs of bright orange flippers. "Don't go without your flippers," she said. 'They might come in handy."
We watched through the windows as Ralphie, Wanda, Carlos, and Keesha swam out into the water. The salmon seemed really big to them. But the salmon hadn't grown. We'd all shrunk when the bus became a salmon!
"I feel like a real shrimp," Carlos joked.
"Quit complaining! Let's stop this salmon-bus, so we can go home," Ralphie said.
The kids swam ahead of the bus as quickly as they could. They stopped in a place that the bus would have to pass. "Okay now, hold hands! Ralphie ordered. They joined hands and waited for the bus to stop.
But the bus didn't stop.
The bus was heading right for Ralphie, Wanda, Carlos, and Keesha! We thought they were done for!
But just as the bus was about to flatten them, it dived down deep into the water and swam beneath them.
Wanda watched as the bus swam off. "Now what are we going to do?" she asked Ralphie.
"There's only one thing to do," Ralphie answered. "Catch the bus, and stop it."
While Ralphie was outside chasing the bus, we were inside trying to stop it. But no matter what buttons we pushed, the bus kept swimming.
"Where are we heading?" Tim asked.
"I don't know," Arnold replied from the taste station, "but according to the bus, the water's getting less salty. It's changing over to fresh water. "
"But saltwater fish die in fresh water!" Dorothy Ann cried out.
Ms. Frizzle did not look nervous. (Then again, she never does.) "Salmon are amazing creatures that can switch safely from being saltwater fish to freshwater fish. A perfect flip-flop," she explained.
Tim glanced through a porthole. "It looks like they go through other changes, too," he said as a school of salmon swam by. The male salmon had grown humps on their backs and had hooked jaws. The females had big, puffed-up bellies.
Suddenly the salmon-bus's belly puffed up, too. Now we knew which type of salmon the bus was -- a female!
The bus was slowing down, which made it easier for Ralphie, Wanda, Carlos, and Keesha to catch it. "We're gaining on 'em, partners," Ralphie called as he rode along on his trusty salmon. "Let's corral that bus! WAAAAHOOO!"
But the bus had already stopped. It was caught in a big salmon traffic jam in the bay at the mouth of the river. "It's as if we're waiting for something," Tim said.
"Right as rain," Ms. Frizzle replied. 'The river is low and there's not much water coming down."
"River?" Carlos asked. "You mean we swam all the way from out in the ocean to a river? For what?"
"Maybe the salmon are waiting for the river to rise," Phoebe said. Just then, it started to rain.
Suddenly a seal leaped into the water. It was hungry for salmon. What if the seal grabbed some small swimming kids or a salmon-shaped bus instead?
Phoebe was right. We were waiting for the river to rise. We started heading upstream -- and fast! But Ralphie really wanted to stop the bus so we could all head home. This time, he had a plan that couldn't miss! Ralphie climbed up on a dam that the salmon would have to jump over. Carlos, Keesha, and Wanda followed close behind. They piled twigs and branches on top of the dam to make it higher.
"This plan is foolproof," Ralphie said as he laid down some more branches. 'The bus will never make it over the dam."
Ralphie, Wanda, Keesha, and Carlos banged on the hatch of the bus. "We're finally done, Ms. Frizzle," Ralphie said. 'The bus has migrated. Can we please go home now?"
"Sure thing, Ralphie," Ms. Frizzle agreed. "After one more eggs-perience!"
A chute opened on the side of the bus. But instead of letting Ralphie, Keesha, Carlos, and Wanda in... it let the rest of us out!
We finally knew why female salmon migrate -- to find a place to lay their eggs. What we couldn't figure out was why the males migrated. So we did what Ms. Frizzle's always telling us to do. We asked questions.
"Excuse me, sir," Carlos asked a male salmon. "We were wondering -- any particular reason why you're here?"
The salmon didn't answer. He sprayed us with something that looked a little cloudy in the water.
"The eggs have to be fertilized by the males before they can grow and hatch," Ms. Frizzle explained.
Suddenly the bus began to use its tail to cover us with gravel.
"The bus is burying us alive!" Wanda cried out.
"It must be okay -- the real salmon are burying their eggs, too," Tim assured her.
Ms. Frizzle hit a green switch. "I'm going to speed things up a bit. It's time to hatch!" she announced.
Before long, we hatched out of the eggs. We were born! Being little salmon was really great! We were safe in our shallow stream, and there was plenty of food.
"How did the salmon know about this place?" Ralphie asked.
"The bus kept smelling a place far away," Tim began.
"And the smell got stronger as we got closer!" Dorothy Ann added.
"I think we smelled our way here," Arnold said.
We'd figured it out. To salmon, every stream has its own smell. Salmon remember the exact scent of the stream where they were born. They just follow the smell home!
We knew that once the salmon got a little bigger, they'd have to migrate back to the ocean, where there was plenty of food and room to grow. Luckily, we didn't have to migrate again.
Ms. Frizzle opened a hatch on the bus. We swam in and became kids again. The Friz pushed another button and the bus changed from a salmon to a goose! We flew home in style!
The other classes were just about to give up on us when we arrived at the Fish Fry. "We're here!" Ralphie called. "With potato fish fries for all!"
The other kids looked at him strangely. "We found salmon," Ralphie explained. "But they were making a journey so incredible, we decided to let them be!"
Once you've seen a salmon on the move, the rest is small potatoes!
From the Desk of Ms. Frizzle
Dear Kids, Parents, and Teachers:
Did you know that salmon aren't the only fish that make amazing migrations to places where they can safely hatch and raise their young?
Take the American eel, for instance. It takes the opposite route from the salmon. The eel breeds in the ocean but spends most of its life in freshwater streams. Adult eels from all over North America and Europe swim to one place in the Sargasso Sea (that's right near Bermuda). When they get there, they lay their eggs and die. The tiny eel larvae drift about in the Gulf Stream. Eventually they reach the river mouths and start their upstream migration. Eels can live for 6 to 12 years in fresh water before they begin their long trip back to the Sargasso Sea, where they will have ample room and food to live as adult eels.
Some fish, like albacore tuna, migrate within different parts of the ocean. The adults leave their eating grounds and swim against ocean currents to the place where they lay and fertilize their tiny tuna eggs. The helpless young are carried by the ocean currents to good feeding grounds. As the young grow and get stronger, they swim back to the adult feeding grounds their parents left behind. This tuna migration pattern forms a sort of triangle.
Happy traveling!
I wonder where Ms. Frizzle will be flying off to tonight.
You never know. I always thought Ms. Frizzle was a little batty.
Our teacher, Ms. Frizzle, loves field trips! In fact, she loves them so much, she even took our parents on one! It all started on Parents Night....
We were all busy putting up our nocturnal animals display in the classroom. Everywhere you looked, there were animals that come out at night -- owls, possums, raccoons, and moths. The place looked great. The only thing missing was Ms. Frizzle, and our parents would be there any minute.
Suddenly the classroom door swung open and a stranger rushed in!
Poor Arnold -- he thought the visitor was a real vampire! But it was only Ralphie in disguise. Ralphie pulled off his mask and laughed.
"Knock it off, Ralphie," Keesha scolded him. "There are no such things as vampires."
Ralphie shook his head. "That's what you think," he argued. "Bats are just vampires in disguise." And to prove it, Ralphie read to us from his vampire comic book.
"The vampire looked around the room of half humans-half bats and said, 'Attention, my beloved children, at last the moment I've been waiting for is here.'"
We didn't pay too much attention to Ralphie. We still had to prepare a display in the attic, too. We climbed the stairs, carrying stuffed possums, coyotes, nighthawks, and bobcats.
"Whoa, it's dark up here!" Wanda exclaimed.
"Uh, why don't I go get a flashlight?" Ralphie offered.
Keesha laughed. "What's the matter, Mr. Vampire Expert... afraid of the dark?"
"I'm not afraid! I just can't see, that's all!" Ralphie said.
"Maybe you can't see, Ralphie," Carlos said, "but that bat up there can."
A small brown bat hung upside down from one of the attic beams. The little guy was fast asleep.
"Wow!" Dorothy Ann said excitedly. "A real creature of the night!"
Whoosh! The bat awoke and flew right over our heads!
Don't hurt it!
Don't let it get me! I don't want to be turned into a vampire!
Just then, we heard a creaking noise coming from the wooden beams above. There was a blast of wind. Someone -- or something -- swung down from above. It was a large creature -- half human and half bat!
"Good evening, class!" the creature said in a scary Transylvanian accent.
We all breathed a big sigh of relief. It was just Ms. Frizzle, dressed like a bat lady!
I see you've found my creature of the night," Ms. Frizzle said, pointing at the bat. "Come. Don't be afraid. Let me show you the secrets of being nocturnal. When you are a creature of the night, you wear the color of night so you won't be seen by your enemies. You stay hidden until the sun has set, and you feed only during the night.
So dark of night, and Keen of craft, of all night fliers, the master's a bat.
That's just the Kind of thing a vampire would say!
Beep! Beep! Outside, we could hear the Magic School Bus signaling Ms. Frizzle. Our parents had arrived. We were all excited that Ms. Frizzle would finally meet our parents. Except Ralphie, that is. Ralphie was convinced Ms. Frizzle was a vampire.
Ralphie, stop being such a pain in the neck.
"Your attention, please!" Ms. Frizzle called. "I thought for the parents-only portion of the evening we might go someplace a little more breathtaking."
We all stared at her. A field trip for our parents?
Ms. Frizzle turned and headed toward the Magic School Bus. "Come along, I won't bite. And don't you worry about the children... they'll be taken care of."
That was all Ralphie needed to hear.
"I wonder where Ms. Frizzle's taking them?" Tim asked as he watched our parents drive off in the Magic School Bus.
Vroom! Just then Liz pulled up on a very strange-looking motorcycle -- complete with sidecars.
"I don't know," Ralphie replied, leaping into a sidecar, "but we have to find out!"
We each buckled ourselves into a sidecar. With Liz in the driver's seat, we followed the Magic School Bus way into the country and across a narrow road that led to an island. The bus stopped in front of an old, crumbling castle.
We watched through the bushes as Ms. Frizzle opened the castle doors. A swarm of bats zoomed out into the dark night.
"Why would Ms. Frizzle bring our parents to a place full of bats?" Wanda asked.
"And mosquitoes," Dorothy Ann added, swatting at a bug.
"Because she's a vampire, that's why!" Ralphie said. Ralphie!" Keesha said. "Ms. Frizzle can't be a vampire, because vampires don't exist. I'm sure there is a perfectly logical explanation for all this, and I'm going to find out what it is!" She ran up to the castle doors.
Wanda tried opening the door -- but the knob came off in her hand. We certainly weren't getting into the castle that way.
"Admit it, Ralphie," Keesha said, "this vampire thing is a bunch of junk!"
Ralphie peered into a nearby window. "Oh, yeah? Then explain why Ms. Frizzle is making our parents drink blood!"
Keesha moved over next to Ralphie and looked through the window. "Hold it!" she called back to us. "That's not blood. It's tomato juice."
Carlos slapped at his arm "Get away, you bloodsuckers!" he yelled.
"Vampires?" Ralphie asked nervously.
"No, mosquitoes," Carlos answered.
A few bats swooped down from a nearby tree. "More bats!" Ralphie screamed.
We watched in fear as the bats flew closer and closer. One bat circled above Arnold's head. It opened its mouth and... captured a mosquito in midair!
"The bats don't want to eat us," Phoebe said. "They want to eat the mosquitoes."
"Which proves they aren't vampires!" Keesha exclaimed, looking straight at Ralphie.
We peeked in the window of the castle. Ms. Frizzle led our parents around the corner and into the next room. Hundreds of tiny pink bat babies hung from the ceiling.
"Aren't those bat babies cute?" Phoebe asked.
Keesha pointed to a mother bat feeding one of her young. "See, Ralphie," she explained, "bats are mammals, not vampires! Their babies drink milk, not blood!"
Ralphie looked through the window. His face turned white.
"Get down!" he whispered. "The Friz is coming."
Ralphie raced across the moonlit courtyard to the Magic School Bus.
"Ralphie, what are you trying to do?" Wanda cried out.
"Get us outta here!" Ralphie called out from the driver's window.
That seemed like a good plan. We followed Ralphie onto the bus.
There was, however, one slight problem with Ralphie's plan... Ralphie didn't know how to drive. He looked at the dashboard. He spotted a button with a bat on it. Ralphie pushed the button. The bus spun around wildly.
Nice one, Ralphie. You turned the bus into a bat!
The Magic School Bus sprouted black wings. Its windshield grew eyes, and ears popped up from its fenders. The Magic School Bus had become the Magic School Bat!
I knew I should have stayed home tonight!
It was dark outside. We couldn't see a thing. "What if we crash into something?" Arnold asked.
"Uh-oh! Big trees at twelve o'clock!" Wanda called out.
We didn't need to worry. The bus flew easily between the trees.
"Awesome! How does the bus keep from running into stuff?" Carlos asked.
"It's a bat, that's how," Keesha answered. "It knows how to get around in the dark. I think it has something to do with that pinging sound."
Every time the Magic School Bat opened its mouth, it let out a high-pitched ping. Then its ears would wiggle. "I think it's listening to the echo of each ping," Tim said.
"I don't know about you guys, but that pinging is killing my ears!" Arnold moaned. He put on some earmuffs to muffle the sound.
Keesha knew that the pings were really important. "When the sound hits an object and bounces back," she explained, "the bus hears the echo and knows the object is there."
"It uses echoes... to... locate," Phoebe thought out loud. "Echolocation! Bats don't need to see with their eyes -- they see with their ears!"
"Cool," said Wanda. "Bats use sound to get around!"
"Come on, Ralphie, admit it," Keesha urged. "Bats are cool. And if you were a night animal, you'd want to be one!"
"I would not," Ralphie answered quickly. Then he thought about it. "A bat could fly back to the castle in the dark, find a way inside, and save his parents from Count Frizzula!"
The thought of his mom turning into a vampire made Ralphie so determined that he pushed all the buttons on the dashboard.
Ralphie's finger landed on a button that had a picture of a kid with bat wings on it. Before we knew it, we'd all turned into bats!
"This wasn't exactly what I had in mind," Ralphie admitted.
But the rest of us thought turning into bats was kind of exciting!
Arnold didn't seem to be having any fun. "I wish I could turn off the moon," he said with a shiver. "Its light is giving me the creeps."
Suddenly Carlos screamed out into the darkness. "Owl alert!"
"Owl alert?" Arnold asked.
Just then a great horned owl swooped down from a high tree branch. He tried to use his sharp, strong claws to capture Arnold and Tim!
It was a good thing Arnold and Tim were hanging upside down, because they could move quickly. They flew out of the owl's way, leaving the big bird with nothing to grab but air. Then they headed to a nearby tree, where the rest of us were hanging around.
"That's why we bats avoid light. Our enemies can see us in it," Keesha explained to Arnold and Tim.
"At last the moment I've been waiting for has come!" we heard Ms. Frizzle say. "Prepare yourselves! Who would like to be my first victim?"
"Take me, Ms. Frizzle," one of the grown-ups called out. Keesha could barely believe her supersensitive bat ears. Her grandmother was volunteering to be Ms. Frizzle's victim! Ralphie was right! The Friz was a vampire!
Keesha flew into an airshaft that led inside the castle. "Don't you dare bite my grandmother!" she cried out.
We couldn't let Keesha battle Count Frizzula alone! We followed her down the shaft and used echolocation to fly safely through the castle.
In the distance, we could hear the grown-ups' voices. "I can't believe I let you do this to me," Keesha's grandmother said.
My neck will be sore for a week," Ralphie's mother added. Maybe we should have stayed home tonight," Arnold's mother groaned.
"Will the kids suffer the same fate we did?" Phoebe's father asked.
The Friz laughed. "Of course. They're mine, too, aren't they?'
"We have to make sure she never does this again!" Ralphie whispered to Keesha.
We zoomed into the next room and discovered...
Ms. Frizzle hadn't turned our parents into bats at all! She had simply shown them how it feels to be a bat, by helping them hang upside down from a chandelier.
Ms. Frizzle, as my Keesha always says, your field trips are simply magical!
We had to leave before Ms. Frizzle spotted us! We swooped past the chandelier and didn't stop flying until we were safely outside.
Ralphie looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I was really wrong about the Friz. She's not a vampire. She's just a really good teacher who gets wrapped up in her work. "
Then Ralphie did something amazing. He admitted he was wrong about bats, too! "Okay, they're not vampires," he said. "They're nocturnal animals that use echolocation to fly at night. They come out at night to feed on insects, not human blood." Ralphie turned to Keesha. "Happy now?" he asked her.
"Keesha may be happy, but the bat news is, we're still bats!" Carlos joked.
"Fangs for reminding us, Carlos," Phoebe giggled.
Beep! Beep! The Magic School Bus flew by with Liz at the wheel. It stopped just long enough for us to fly on board. Before we knew it, we were transformed from bats back into kids.
"What do you know! It's our kids!" Arnold's father said as he left the castle.
Ralphie's mother looked him squarely in the eye.
"I know that guilty look, Ralphie," she said. "What's going on?"
Ms. Frizzle put her arm around Ralphie. "Oh, I'm sure they were just hanging out," she answered with a smile.
"Right, Ms. Frizzle," Ralphie agreed. And bats all!
Poor bats. They are such misunderstood creatures. Read on to find out more...
1. Are bats birds?
Surprise I Bats are mammals just like us. That means their bodies are covered with fur, their young are horn, live, and they nurse their young on milk produced by the mother.
2. Are bats blind?
Lots of people use the expression "blind as a bat. " But just because bats shy away from direct light doesn't mean they are blind. The truth is, the majority of bats can see as well as humans.
3. Do bats give people rabies?
People tend to stay away from bats because they fear they can get rabies from them. The truth is, most bats do not have rabies, but some (particularly the silver-winged bat) do. And since you can't tell whether or not a bat is healthy, the best thing to do is to keep your distance from them, the way you should from any wild animal. And if you see an injured bat lying still, don't go near it. Instead, call the animal control center nearest you. The animal will probably die, and the experts will know how to dispose of it.
4. Are bats cruel animals?
Actually, bats are very social, loving creatures. Mother bats spend most of their time tending to their young. And should a baby bat become abandoned, a mother bat will adopt the orphaned bat and care for it as her own. Last week, we were learning about animal homes. Everything was normal until Wanda brought her best friend, Bella the bullfrog, to school.
"Wonderful!" said Ms. Frizzle. "What does a bullfrog need in her home or habitat?"
"A safe place to sleep!" said Wanda.
Water!" said Ralphie.
"Food!" said Dorothy Ann.
"Fresh air!" said Arnold as he opened the window.
While we were making a habitat for Bella, she hopped out the window.
"Bella?' wailed Wanda. "Arnold, you let her get away! Ms. Frizzle, may Arnold and I go look for Bella?"
A funny gleam came into Ms. Frizzle's eyes. "Good idea, Wanda!" she said.
"Let's all look for Bella! Class, it's time for a field trip! said the Friz as she marched us out the door.
"I knew it," groaned Arnold. "Another one of Ms. Frizzles crazy field trips!"
But he climbed onto the old school bus with the rest of us.
"Of course," Ms. Frizzle said as we started off, "the best way to find a frog is to be a frog!" Suddenly we were spinning... and getting smaller. Then the old school bus hopped away like a bullfrog!
We hopped through the woods toward a fast-running creek.
"I'm not feeling too well!" Ralphie moaned as we took a bad bounce. "Could we stop, please?"
"What do you think, class?" asked Ms. Frizzle. "Should we start looking for Bella here?"
"This looks like a good frog habitat to me," Wanda said. "Lots of insects to eat, plenty of running water. Let's look!" Ms. Frizzle stopped the bus. "Everybody out!" she said.
"Bella must be here," Wanda said, as she ran toward the stream.
"Bella!" she called.
Wanda didn't see Arnold, who was looking at some rocks. She tripped and... ka-sploosh! They both landed in the cold, fast-running water.
"Help!" yelled Arnold as he and Wanda were swept downstream.
"Oh, no! Here comes a waterfall!" cried Wanda.
Just then, Ms. Frizzle and the school bus calmly swam by. They scooped Wanda and Arnold into a big net.
The bus dropped Wanda and Arnold gently onto dry land.
"Whew," said Wanda. 'The water in that stream is too fast, even for a frog!"
Ralphie shook his head. "If Bella laid eggs in that water, they'd be two miles downstream before you could say 'ribbit'!"
"Excellent!" said Ms. Frizzle. "Bullfrogs need to lay their eggs in quiet water. But where...?"
Then something flew by that caught her eye.
"Aha! It's a great blue heron!" said Ms. Frizzle. "Follow that bird!"
"A great blue heron?" said Arnold. "Why are we following a great blue heron?"
The Friz did not hear him. She was already marching off.
Carlos knew all about beavers. He had just read a book about them.
He said, "Beavers need a quiet pond to live in. So they make their own habitat! They build a dam across a stream. Slowly, the place fills up like a bathtub. It turns into a pond. Plants grow. Bugs come to live in and eat the plants. And the bugs are food for other hungry animals, like..."
"Bellar Wanda yelled. 'There she is!"
"She has everything she needs in her habitat," Arnold said. "Plenty of space, lots of insects to eat, quiet water to lay her eggs in, and lots of fresh air, too!"
"And a great blue heron about to eat her!" gasped Wanda. "Hold on, Bella, I'll save you!"
Before anyone could stop her, Wanda waded into the water.
Wanda splashed toward the middle of the pond. She reached Bella's lily pad at the same time as the heron.
Hop! Plunk! Bella disappeared into the water. "Help!" yelled Wanda as the heron's beak poked toward her.
We saw the heron fly away. For a moment, we could not see Wanda. Then we heard a squishing sound and saw Wanda coming out of the pond.
"Are you all right?" Arnold asked.
"All right? I was almost a heron's lunch!" Wanda sputtered. "But where's Bella?"
Then Wanda saw Bella sitting on her lily pad -- just as if nothing had happened.
"Bella!" Wanda exclaimed happily. "You're all right! You had better come home with me. You can't stay here where a heron might eat you."
"Not necessarily, Wanda," said Ms. Frizzle. "A heron might eat Bella -- if it could catch her!"
"Oh," said Wanda. "You mean, Bella has places where she can hide from the heron. I guess they are part of her habitat, too. But, at least back at school, she'd be safe. What about --?"
Wanda was interrupted by a strange noise. "GAR-RUMP! HER-MAN!"
Bella had a friend! "HER-MAN!" he croaked.
"Oh, no," said Arnold. "We'll never get two frogs back to school!"
Wanda looked at Bella and her friend. "You're right, Arnold," Wanda said, as she waded out to Bella's lily pad.
"Bella," Wanda said, "you have everything you need right here. Quiet water, hiding places, food, space -- and your new friend! I'm going to leave you here in the habitat you found."
"BEL-LUH!" croaked Bella.
Wanda walked back to us. We all climbed onto the school bus.
As we hopped away, Wanda waved, Good-bye, Bella!" she called.
Bella will be very happy with all those flies to eat!
When we got back to school, we put away Bella's things. Arnold was glad to be back. "Ahh!" he said. "My desk, a roof over my head, my lunch, and my milk. It feels good to be back in my own habitat!"
Wanda did not look so happy.
"You miss Bella, don't you?" said Arnold. Wanda nodded.
Then we brought out something we had made for her. It was the world's biggest toy bullfrog. "Surprise!" we yelled.
Tim pressed a button.
"GAR-RUMP!" croaked the frog.
Wanda smiled.
"Thank you!" said Wanda, giving the frog a big hug. "I love it!"
"It doesn't need water, food, or fresh air," said
Ms. Frizzle.
"And it won't jump out the window!" said Arnold.
It doesn't even eat fruit flies!
Dear Kids, Parents, and Teachers:
This book introduces the concept of habitat, the neighborhood in which a group of plants and animals live and interact.
Animals require some basic things from their habitats -- water, food, shelter, and a place to raise their young. Specific animals have specific needs.
A pond is a good habitat for many kinds of animals, such as insects, beavers, frogs, and birds.
Habitats can be changed -- by animals (such as beavers), by humans, or by other forces (such as climate). When a habitat changes, its inhabitants change, too. Let me tell you about the day Ralphie decided he was a superhero. It started one hot morning when we were sitting around the classroom. I mean, it was really hot. There wasn't a breath of air. It was the kind of day that gives new meaning to the words "When you're hot, you're hot."
In spite of the heat, Carlos was working on his science project. Then enter the Friz! (That's what we sometimes call our teacher, Ms. Frizzle.) She was wearing an amazing outfit, even for her. And she was singing!
"I know what we need to clear up this muggy weather," said Ralphie, looking out the window. "A big thunderstorm."
"You mean with thunder and... and lightning?" asked Arnold. It was only nine o'clock and already Arnold was beginning to think this was one of those days he should have stayed home.
The idea of a thunderstorm was giving Ralphie a brainstorm. "What if I could make a thunderstorm? It would be Ralphie to the rescue!"
"I wouldn't even be Ralphie anymore," Ralphie said to himself. I'd be WEATHERMAN! And that's how this all started.
In the next instant, Ms. Frizzle brought Ralphie back to the real world.
"How would you like to join our discussion about weather, Ralphie?" she asked.
"Sure," said Ralphie. "Weather is my specialty. Weather is how all the air above and around us is right now. "
"No it's not," Carlos objected. "It's water that makes the weather. You know, water, as in RAIN?"
Then Dorothy Ann chimed in. "According to my research, it's air that makes the weather. Moving air, as in WIND."
Keesha disagreed... naturally. "Let's get this straight -- heat makes the weather, as in HEAT FROM THE SUN!"
Ms. Frizzle said everyone was right. "Air, water, and heat stirred together make weather," she explained.
What's all that stuff for?
Then the Friz announced that we were going on -- you guessed it -- a field trip! Carlos set up his rain catcher outside, just in case it rained while we were gone.
We couldn't believe our eyes when e saw our bus. It looked like a weird weather machine.
I hope the air-conditioning still works.
Ralphie was back to his Weatherman thing. Before we got on the bus, he announced, "I, Weatherman, will show you how to make weather. I will even make a thunderstorm! But first, we shall explore one of weather's major ingredients -- AIR!"
"Excuse me?" said Keesha. "What's to explore? Air is all over the place."
"Do you think I mean just plain old sitting-around air? I'm talking about moving air!" said Ralphie.
Then we all got on the bus.
We couldn't believe that Ms. Frizzle actually let Ralphie take over the controls. Maybe the heat was getting to her brain, too. Ralphie pressed a button, pulled some levers, and the giant fan behind the bus turned on.
The next thing we knew, the bus was rising up in the air, and the top was opening up.
And the next thing we knew, we all changed into super-light versions of ourselves. We were floating out the top and into the air.
"Look at that humongous cloud," said Carlos. 'Too bad it's not over my rain catcher."
"And look how sunny it is over there, said Tim.
"According to my research," said Dorothy Ann, weather is different in different places. That's because various combinations of wind, water, and heat make many kinds of weather." D. A. really is smart, I have to admit.
When we looked back at the bus, it had sprouted wings and turned into a glider. Our bus does stuff like that.
Listen, you guys. All Ralphie did was turn on a giant fan!
"The world isn't really filled with big fans," said Wanda when we were all back on the bus. "So what really makes the wind?"
"I'll answer that," said Keesha, "but then Ralphie has to make a thunderstorm."
After Ralphie mixed air and heat to make an updraft, some of the kids actually started calling him Weatherman. Keesha couldn't believe it.
"How about clouds?" asked Wanda. "Can you make clouds, too. Weatherman?"
"Why certainly, Wanda," said Ralphie. "I'll just, er..."
"You need water," piped up Phoebe. "Clouds are made out of water. I learned that in my old school."
Then Ralphie pulled another lever, and without so much as a "Shikka-shikka-KABOOM," we turned into water You could see right through us. Carlos even put his arm right through Arnold.
The bus started changing, too. It turned into a giant seltzer bottle and sprayed us out into the air! If we had been real water, the sun would have warmed us and made us evaporate into the air. But this was much more fun.
"Weatherman has turned us from water into tiny droplets," Ms. Frizzle explained. (Now she was calling Ralphie "Weatherman," too!) "Keep together, class!"
"We are making a cloud!" shouted Wanda.
"Thanks to me. Weatherman!" yelled Weatherman... I mean Ralphie.
"It's cold up here," Arnold complained. "I knew I should have brought a sweater."
"The air is so cold way up here, we're turning into ice crystals,"
Ms. Frizzle told us.
"We're also falling," observed Carlos. And sure enough, he was right.
Ms. Frizzle explained that when ice crystals in a cloud grow and stick together, they get heavy and fall.
"Look on the bright side," said D. A. "The lower we fall, the warmer we get."
"Which must be why we're melting!" yelled Tim.
Ralphie was really on a power trip now. "Weatherman made rain!" he shouted.
Luckily, our bus didn't fail us. It had turned back into a glider, but now it had a giant funnel on top. We rained into the funnel and right back into the bus. We were kids again!
That was fantastic!
Great ride!
Come on, Weatherman let's do it again!
Everyone thought it had been neat being a cloud, then ice crystals, and then falling down as rain. But Keesha was still not impressed.
"Okay, RALPHIE," she said (being sure to call him Ralphie and not Weatherman), "so you made a little cloud and a little rain. But where's the thunderstorm?"
"Weatherman will not disappoint you!" promised Ralphie. He was at the controls again. "Make an updraft!" he shouted as he pulled some levers. "Make a cloud! Freeze the water!"
The wind roared. Rain poured down. Thunder boomed. Lightning flashed. Weatherman had really made a thunderstorm... and we were right inside it!
"Look," said Carlos in amazement, "it's raining UP!
'That's right, Carlos," said Ms. Frizzle. "Moist air in the rising updraft cools, and condenses into clouds. If the air gets cold enough, the moisture turns to ice crystals, then snow. When the snow gets heavy enough, it falls. As it gets warmer, it turns to rain."
Then Arnold pulled himself together long enough to give us all a safety lecture. Leave it to Arnole.
Poor Ralphie was starting to look a little sick. 'This is too much," he wailed. "I've got to make it stop!"
"Sony, Weatherman," said Ms. Frizzle, "but a storm like this won't stop until it's all rained out."
"Listen, I'm not really Weatherman." Ralphie sounded desperate. "I'm just Ralphie. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just pulling levers to show off!"
As Ralphie thought, the tiny bus got caught in an updraft and started going up higher in the air. It was colder up there, so now there were huge snowflakes instead of huge raindrops. Ralphie started muttering to himself.
"Let's see," Ralphie thought out loud, "the storm has to rain out. Out. Down. Up... up with the updraft.... Freeze, fall, melt... melted snow falling... falling down. Down and out. That's it! I, Weatherman, will get us out of this."
Liz steered the glider-bus as we all jumped off. We each grabbed our own snowflake to ride on at least for a minute. "Excuse me." said Arnold, "but my snowflake's melting." "We're getting rained out!" yelled D. A.
Next thing we knew, we were raining right into Carlos's rain catcher. "My rain catcher worked!" yelled Carlos. "It's already rained one inch. Plus eight kids and one teacher."
The only question was, now that we were rained out, how were we going to get out? Luckily, Liz had just driven the bus into the parking lot. 
Ms. Frizzle gave the thumbs-up sign to Liz. Then Liz spilled us right out of the rain catcher. As we landed on the ground just outside our school door, we grew back to our normal size.
How Far Is the Storm?
An Activity for Parents and Kids
If you're right at the center of a thunderstorm, you can see the lightning and hear the thunder at almost the same time. But if you're any distance away from the center, you see the lightning before you hear the thunder. That's because the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound. Light travels faster, so you see the lightning first.
You can tell how many miles away the center of a thunderstorm is by counting the seconds between the lightning and thunder and dividing by 5. (Use a watch or clock with a second hand.) If the time between the thunder and lightning is 10 seconds, the center of the storm is 2 miles away, because 10 divided by 5 is 2. If the time is 15 seconds, the storm is 3 miles away. The more seconds you count, the farther away the storm is.
If you count the seconds between the lightning an the thunder a few times, and each time you count more seconds, the center of the storm is moving away, and it may be clearing up soon. If you count fewer seconds each time, the center of the storm is moving toward you. If the thunder and lightning occur at the same time, the center of the storm is directly above you. Remember what Arnold told you about lightning, and stay inside! In Ms. Frizzle's class, a good question can lead to anything! Take the other day, for example. We were all sitting in our classroom making rainbows.
"Why are rainbows red on the outside and violet on the inside?" Ralphie asked.
"It's because the colors of a rainbow come out according to the length of the light waves," Arnold answered. "Red is the longest wavelength and violet is the shortest."
What in the world was Arnold talking about?
"Wait until you see my rainbow! Carlos said. Carlos was making a rainbow by putting different colored candy wrappers over a bunch of flashlights.
"But you need color to make a rainbow!" said Dorothy Ann, waving her paintbrush. "Not candy wrappers and flashlights!"
"But my colored candy wrappers make color by coloring the light," said Carlos.
"Dream on, Carlos!" said DA. "Color is color and light is light! Oh, yeah? I'll show you color! Look!" said Carlos, shining a red light on Dorothy Ann's rainbow, turning it all red.
Suddenly, we heard strange dings and beeps coming from inside Ms. Frizzle's closet. What was making all that noise?
"Let's check it out!" said Wanda as she headed toward the door.
"Wanda, we can't go in there!" said Arnold.
But Wanda was more curious than scared. She slowly opened the door... and there was Ms. Frizzle, playing on the most amazing pinball machine we'd ever seen!
"I made this machine myself," Ms. Frizzle told us. "You play by activating the Panoramic Pulse Pumper, which sends a burst of white light, better known as regular everyday light, into the machine. Then you try to make a rainbow with the white light!" "Hold it!" Keesha shouted. "Rainbows are all different colors. How can you make a rainbow out of white light?"
"I'll be happy to show you, Keesha," Ms. Frizzle said, "but I have only one game left to do it. If I can light up all six colors of the rainbow, I get to keep the machine. But if I lose," said Ms. Frizzle sadly, "this machine will be taken away!"
We wondered who would be taking it away, but Ms. Frizzle seemed so upset, no one had the heart to ask.
Just then, Ms. Frizzle got that funny look in her eye. "Single file, class," she said. "Time for a field trip!"
As usual, Arnold tried to get out of the trip. And much to our surprise, Ms. Frizzle said he could stay behind!
"Buckle up, class, and prepare for a colorful experience!" said Ms. Frizzle. 'Take 'em away, Liz!"
But just before we took off, Ms. Frizzle got off the bus! The next thing we knew, we'd shrunk and were flying in the teeny bus toward the classroom. Then WHOOSH! The bus turned into a little ball of white light and flew right through the glass of the pinball machine! We couldn't believe it! We were inside the machine, surrounded by mirrors, a bunch of colorful objects, and a prism.
"How do you make the rainbow?" asked Carlos, looking at the prism and mirrors inside the game.
"By getting colored light into the colored eyes," said Ms. Frizzle, pointing to the eyes on the scoreboard. "Red light has to go into the red eye, orange light into the orange eye, yellow light into the yellow eye, green light into the green eye, blue into the blue eye, and violet into the violet eye! Six colors into six colored eyes -- and yon only have six chances to do it!"
To show us how the game worked, Ms. Frizzle pulled back the Panoramic Pulse Pumper. When she let go of it, a ball of white light blasted up the chute into the machine.
"Totally cool!" said Wanda.
The white light then hit a mirror at the top of the chute and bounced off into a special piece of glass called a prism. We all expected the white light to come out the other side of the prism -- but it didn't. Instead, six different colors came out: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet! And all six colors were coming right at us!
We all hit the floor, and the colored lights shot right over our heads! When the lights hit the black wall behind us, they disappeared.
"Oh, no!" said Phoebe. "None of the colored lights went into the colored eyes."
Ms. Frizzle used the instant-replay screen to show us what had happened.
"I see!" said Keesha. 'The white light went up the chute and bounced off a mirror."
"Yes!" said Tim. Then it went into the prism."
"And it came out as all the colors of the rainbow!" DA added.
Then the colors must have come from the white light!" concluded Wanda.
Now we knew that to make a rainbow we had to get the colored lights that came out of the prism into the colored eyes. We were ready!
"But we only have five chances left to get six colors into six eyes," worried Phoebe.
"It seems to me you've got to keep the colored light bouncing off things until it hits the right colored eye," Arnold said.
"Since the white light bounced off the mirror," Wanda added, "maybe the colored lights will bounce, too."
"Good thinking, Wanda!" said Carlos. "We could line up a mirror to bounce the red light into the red eye!"
But just as Ms. Frizzle was about to send white light pulse number two up the chute, we heard a voice. It was Mr. Ruhle, our principal!
Ms. Frizzle sent Arnold out to keep Mr. Ruhle busy while we tried to win the game.
"White light pulse number two coming at you!" said Ms. Frizzle.
She released the Panoramic Pulse Pumper. As the white light blasted through the prism, we pushed a mirror into the path of the red light. But the red light didn't just hit the mirror. It hit the mirror, a red fruit, and then bounced into the red eye!
Next we put a mirror in what we thought was the perfect spot to bounce the orange light coming out of the prism into the orange eye. "Let 'er rip, Ms. Frizzle!" said Carlos.
"White light pulse number three up the tree!" said Ms. Frizzle, releasing the white light.
The white light came up the chute, went through the prism, and split into six colors. The orange light bounced off the mirror, just as we had planned. But instead of going into the orange eye, the orange light hit a green shamrock... and disappeared!
"Where did the orange light go?" yelled Wanda.
Then, to everyone's surprise, the green light that had come out of the prism with the orange light hit the same shamrock and didn't disappear at all. Instead, it bounced into the green eye!
"Hmmm, red light... red fruit... green light... green shamrock?. DA was thinking hard. "When we see something, say, like green," she asked Ms. Frizzle, "is it by any chance green because only green light bounces off green objects and into our eyes?"
Ms. Frizzle nodded and smiled.
Now we knew that light bounces off mirrors and off things -- red light bounces off the red fruit, green light bounces off the green shamrock, yellow light bounces off the yellow banana. But we still had to get the orange, blue, yellow, and violet lights into the right colored eyes. And we only had three white light pulses left.
"We need to sink two at once or we're sunk!" said Carlos.
"How about orange and blue?" suggested Phoebe. 'They look nice together." We all agreed. So we lined up as many orange and blue things as possible. We were going to try to bounce the orange light that came out of the prism into the orange eye and the blue light into the blue eye -- at the same time.
"White light pulse number four out the door!" said Ms. Frizzle. The white light went up the chute, hit the mirror, and bounced into the prism. As before, it came out as the six colors of the rainbow. The orange light bounced off the mirror, hit one orange, then the other orange, and bounced right into the orange eye. "Bingo!" cried Ralphie.
At the same time, the blue light bounced off a mirror, hit the blue fish, and bounced toward Carlos and his blue sweatshirt. "Why me?" moaned Carlos as it got closer and closer and closer. At the last second he ducked! The blue light whizzed over his head, smashed into the yellow bus behind him, and disappeared.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ruhle had taken Arnold to the library to look for Ms. Frizzle. Poor Arnold tried to keep Mr. Ruhle's mind off Ms. Frizzle by reading from a book. "A blue fish is blue because it bounces only blue light, which we see when it reaches our eyes." Just then, "Grrrrrglrrrgl!!!!" Arnold's stomach growled.
"Good thinking, Arnold!" said Mr. Ruhle. "Maybe Ms. Frizzle is in the cafeteria!"
Back inside the machine, we were all set up to bounce the yellow light into the yellow eye. We were also going to try again to bounce the blue light into the blue eye.
"White light pulse number five, ready to jive!" said Ms. Frizzle.
This time, when the blue light came out of the prism and zipped toward Carlos, he was ready for it. "No way am I ducking this time!" he said -- and he didn't!
The blue light bounced off his sweatshirt and into the blue eye! At the same time, the yellow light bounced off the mirror, hit the yellow banana, hit the yellow bus, and bounced into the yellow eye!
The last color we had to get into an eye was violet, and we had only one white light pulse left. The pressure was on!
"Last white light in sight!" said Ms. Frizzle as she let go of the Panoramic Pulse Pumper. "It's rainbow time!"
The white light bounced into the prism and split into six colors. The violet light then hit the mirror, bounced off a bunch of purple grapes, and headed toward the yellow bus.
"Oh, no! Not the yellow bus!" cried Keesha.
"If violet hits yellow, it'll disappear!" said Carlos.
"And the game'll be over!" cried Tim.
But suddenly, DA reached into her book bag and held up a violet-colored book in front of the yellow bus. The violet light bounced off the violet book and into the violet eye!
Just then, we all heard a familiar voice from the other side of the door. Mr. Ruhle was back!
"You know," said Arnold, "you got in there by turning into light..."
"Arnold! You're a genius!" said Carlos. "We got in as light -- we'll get out as light!"
Liz pressed a few buttons and turned the bus into white light. But when she tried to drive us out of the machine, the bus hit the mirror and bounced right into the prism! The next thing we knew, there were six of each of us -- one in every color!
"Cool!" said Ralphie. "I can be my own basketball team!" The rest of us didn't think that was very funny.
Arnold flipped us back into the prism. We went in as six different colors and came out the other side as white light. It was amazing. Then Liz drove the bus up and out of the pinball machine. Coming through!" yelled Carlos.
Arnold opened the closet door, and we flew into the classroom and out the open window!
When we were safely outside, the bus changed us back into our normal selves. We ran in to find Ms. Frizzle and Mr. Ruhle.
"We figured it out, Ms. Frizzle," said Carlos. "All the colors of the rainbow are hidden in ordinary light!"
Which means white light is just filled with color!" agreed Dorothy Ann.
"Speaking of color and light," Mr. Ruhle said to Ms. Frizzle, "did you, uh... make the rainbow?"
"As a matter of fact, I didn't," said Ms. Frizzle.
"Then the pinball machine is mine, all mine!" exclaimed Mr. Ruhle.
We were very surprised to learn that it was Mr. Ruhle who would've gotten the pinball machine if we hadn't made the rainbow!
"Actually, it isn't yours," said Ms. Frizzle. "I didn't make the rainbow, but my class did!"
"Are you sure I can't have the machine?" Mr. Ruhle asked. He looked very disappointed.
"I'm sure," said Ms. Frizzle. "But you can come here and play it whenever you want."
"Really?" said Mr. Ruhle with a smile. "Can I play it now?" "Absolutely!" said Ms. Frizzle. "You look as if you could use a little light entertainment!"
Did you like my pinball machine? Pretty enLIGHTening, if I do say so myself! You know, you don't need a magic machine to play with light and color. Remember what Carlos was doing with his candy wrappers and flashlight? Transparent things (like candy wrappers and theater gels) act like gates. They let their own color of light through and block off all the other colors. Shine your flashlight onto a white wall, then put a transparent candy wrapper in front of it. What happens? What color light is it letting through? What happens when you put more than one wrapper on the flashlight at the same time? Try different combinations of colors to see what happens. It's time to take chances, make mistakes, and get color out of white light!"Ah, the smell of a rotting orange!" Ms. Frizzle was thrilled. Our class was having a disgusting, gross rot contest, and Ralphie's orange was really rotten. The judges gave him two nose holds and a faint.
Science is a little different in Ms. Frizzle's class.
Then it was Wanda's turn. She had something really rotten in a plastic tub. It looked all black and moldy.
"It's been in my refrigerator since I was four years old," she told us.
The Friz could hardly wait to see what it was. Whatever it was, the judges gave Wanda three faints. She was the winner.
"To congratulate you," said Ms. Frizzle, "I have a little prize." Then she gave Wanda a baby tree.
Wanda seemed confused. "I really like it," she said, "but it's not rotten or anything, is it?"
Keesha said, "It's so... alive."
"That's right, Keesha," said the Friz. "It's very alive, and so is rot!"
Really? We were very surprised.
Wanda said she wanted to plant her tree in an empty lot near her home.
"To the bus, class. Two by two," said Ms. Frizzle. And in no time we were riding through town.
On the way Keesha asked, "Why do you want to put your nice tree in that ugly old lot?"
"It's filled with lots of dead stuff," added Carlos.
"That's the point," said Wanda. "We can make the lot beautiful. We'll clear out all the dead stuff and plant my lovely tree."
"The tree will look great when it gets big," Wanda told us. 'The lot can become a little park. We could call it Wanda World!"
"What about a theme park?" Carlos suggested.
"And the theme could be rot!" cried Dorothy Ann. "We'll call it Rot Land."
Keesha wanted to open a restaurant. Phoebe wanted to build a recycling center.
Wanda had other plans.
The bus stopped at the lot. "Ms. Frizzle, I'm going to go out and have a look," Wanda said.
Ms. Frizzle nodded. 'Take chances," she called after Wanda. "Get messy. Make mistakes!"
While we were still thinking of ways to use the lot, Wanda saw a sign.
Without telling anyone, Wanda ran to a phone booth and called Larry. He promised to come and clean up the lot right away.
When Wanda returned to the bus, we were still arguing about what to do.
Then Arnold shouted, "Hold it! Why not leave this place just the way it is? If you leave nature alone, it'll get along just fine."
Wanda didn't agree. 'That rotten log has got to go. It's dead! It's useless," she said. "I mean, look at it."
That was all Ms. Frizzle needed to hear. "Seat belts, everyone!" called the Friz. The bus began to shake and shrink with us in it. The next thing we knew, we were smaller, and driving over a log in the lot.
"We're going to find out what rot has to do with life," the Friz explained.
Wanda didn't seem to be enjoying our field trip. "We've got to go!" she kept yelling.
The rest of us were busy dodging beetles, termites, and a chipmunk. They seemed so big because we were so little.
Then Ralphie pointed to a hole.
"Our rotten field trip has just begun," said the Friz. And she marched us down the hole into the log. We entered a dark tunnel.
Suddenly, we heard a strange sound. It was a woodpecker looking for its dinner.
"Don't worry," said Ms. Frizzle. "Woodpeckers only eat bugs."
The problem was, we were the same size as bugs.
Something big and scary came toward us from the other end of the tunnel. Ms. Frizzle said it was a bessie bug -- a kind of beetle.
"They make the tunnels in the log," she explained.
We were glad when the bus squeezed its way through the tunnel. It looked a little different, though. We followed the bus down the tunnel.
Wanda was still trying to get us out of there. "We might become somebody's lunch," she warned.
This didn't bother the Friz. She jumped on a slimy slide and yelled for us to follow.
"It's a slime mold -- a kind of fungus," she said. "Another living thing living off the log.
Ms. Frizzle pointed out a family of mice sleeping in the log. "See? The log gives some animals shelter," she said. "You know," said Dorothy Ann, "this place is stunningly stupendous just the way it is."
"Wait!" said Wanda. "What about taking this log away?" "Sony, Wanda. We've changed our minds," Carlos told her.
"Hey, welcome to the Keep the Log as It Is Club," said Arnold. He gave Dorothy Ann and Carlos special badges.
Just then the Friz called, "Lunchtime, class!"
We were all very hungry, but the menu bugged us. "Log nuggets? Wood dumplings? Bark pudding?" asked Ms. Frizzle.
When Ralphie asked for real food, she said, "The log is food. That's the beauty of it."
She pointed to all the living things that used the log for food and energy.
"So let's just get out of here and open our own restaurant," said Wanda. As she spoke, a beetle ran by and caught a grub.
"The beetle is having the grub for lunch," said Ralphie.
"Right," agreed Keesha. "Everywhere you look, it's lunchtime."
Ralphie nodded. 'This place is already a restaurant. Sorry, Wanda, we don't want to clear it away anymore."
"Two more for the Keep the Log as It Is Club," yelled Arnold. He passed out badges to Keesha and Ralphie.
We came to a really mushy part of the log. "Decomposition. Isn't it wonderful?" sighed the Friz. "It breaks everything down into smaller pieces." She pointed out some rotten examples.
"Okay," agreed Wanda, "but these creatures leave a lot of litter, don't they? You know, bug plops!"
"The bug plops are being eaten by other bugs, too," Phoebe told her.
"It's natural recycling," added Tim.
Wanda thought it was gross, but Ms. Frizzle said it was all part of decomposition.
"Oh, I give up," said Wanda. "Now let's just get out of here!"
But Keesha was calling to us from the very end of the rotten log. She had found something else. "Look! Beautiful, rich soil!" she exclaimed.
"It's perfect for your tree, Wanda," said Arnold as we raced down to meet her. Arnold and Keesha started to sing.
An old dead log sitting on your lawn;
It's ugly, it's awful, and you want it gone.
Well, that log you've got is not a blot 'Cause it's got rot... and that's a lot.
It's breaking down... are you wondering how? Well, fungus and bugs -- they use it for chow.
It's rained on by rain, snowed on by snow,
Wanda finally understood. 'This place is fine, just the way it is. There is no reason to take this log away," she told us.
But just then a car door slammed.
Wanda gulped. "No reason... except one," she said.
"What's that?" asked Carlos.
"Larry," Wanda gulped as a giant boot came down near where we stood. The ground shook, and so did we.
We began to run.
"This way, class!" Ms. Frizzle called, and we dashed under the log. Outside, we could hear the sound of a chain saw.
"Is there something you'd like to tell us?" the Friz asked Wanda.
Then we found out about Wanda's call to Larry.
We could tell she felt bad. We all did.
While we were shaking and quaking, Wanda thought of a plan. She explained it to Ms. Frizzle.
"Good idea," said the Friz. Then she whistled to the bus. "Come on, guys. I need your help," said Wanda, and we all began to dig out the bus.
Then Wanda opened a hatch on the bus. She tossed us all funny-looking costumes. "Put these on and hurry! We're going to be log gremlins."
You have got to be joking," said Ralphie. 
But Wanda was serious. So we put on the costumes, jumped on the bus, fastened our seat belts, and prepared for takeoff. The bus flew onto Larry's helmet just as he was about to saw the log.
Then we all climbed out, and Wanda started shouting to Larry. He was certainly surprised. Log gremlins were new to him.
"What do you see when you look around here?" Wanda asked him.
"A routine log removal," answered Larry.
"Well, look again," said Wanda. Then she told Larry about all the life in the log. She explained that rot is wonderful and necessary.
"All those creatures are nature's Rot Squad. They're how nature recycles itself and makes new from the old," she said.
So did we.
"Log gremlins," we heard him mutter. "How come I've never heard of them before?"
"That gremlin idea was a stroke of genius," said Arnold. "Thanks, Arn," said Wanda. "But from now on I'm going to leave rot alone."
Back in the classroom, there was another surprise -- the bucket of rot from our contest. It was so smelly it was hard to ignore!
"Everybody back on the bus!" shouted Wanda. "I've got another rotten idea!"
"Rot is an important part of nature," she said. "It provides food for other living things. So this rot will be a treat for my tree!"
Ms. Frizzle said, "As I always say, it doesn't have to be delicious to be nutritious."
We all laughed. Then Wanda recycled our rot right in that lot.
Producer: Hello. This is the Magic School Bus.
Caller: That show was rotten.
Producer: Thank you.
Caller: But not all rotten things are filled with bugs. Producer: Right. Lots of rot is caused by things that are too small to see -- like bacteria.
Caller: So? Why weren't bacteria in the show?
Producer: We wanted to shrink down to the size of bacteria, but Arnold wouldn't go.
Caller: Is there anything that doesn't rot?
Producer: Not if it was once alive. Plants, animals, bacteria -- all decompose after they die.
Caller: A log fell near my house. When's it going to rot? Producer: It has already started, but rot can take a long time -- years, even.
Caller: Another thing -- you left out one of my favorite creatures, the earthworm.
Producer: Whoops!
Caller: Earthworms are very good at eating and plowing and improving the soil.
Producer: Then that's what they should be left to do.
Caller: What if there were no rot? What if nothing ever decayed?
Producer: The soil wouldn't get back the nutrients or food that plants need to grow. So the plants would die. Caller: One more thing. Are there really log gremlins? Producer: Well, er... Larry thought so.
Caller: Hmmm...
A Project for Parents and Kids.
It breaks things up, and it helps the soil. So what about things that don't rot? What happens to them? Try this to find out.
1. Line the inside of a shoebox with plastic.
2. Fill the shoebox halfway with soil from outside.
3. Bury five things -- some grapes, a safety pin, a piece of paper, a lettuce leaf, a ballpoint pen -- a few inches deep in the box.
4. Label five Popsicle sticks with the names of the things you buried. Place these in the soil as markers.
5. Make a chart like the one below. Tell what you think will happen. After several weeks, check to see what does happen.
Something to Think About: What happens to things that rot when you throw them away? What happens to things that don't rot? Why is it important to recycle things that rot? Having a teacher like Ms. Frizzle can be out of this world! Take yesterday, for example, when we were rehearsing for our solar system play. Suddenly a loud crash came from the hallway. We raced to the door to find Ms. Frizzle and Dorothy Ann on the floor.
Rushing to class, Dorothy Ann had run smack into the Friz. Books, films, and papers were everywhere!
"Well, as I always say, there's nothing like starting the day with a bang!" exclaimed Ms. Frizzle as she and Dorothy Ann dusted themselves off.
"Where have you been, Dorothy Ann?" asked Wanda. "We had to start our solar system play without you." "Yeah, you're supposed to be Pluto," Carlos said. "Arf, arf!" he joked.
I love this science fiction film!
"There's no time for a play!" cried Dorothy Ann.
"We have to evacuate the school this instant! I've been tracking an asteroid I saw through my telescope." "What's an asteroid?" Tim asked.
"It's a big space rock," Dorothy Ann answered. "And according to my calculations, sometime in the next twenty-four hours it's going to crash into our school and destroy it!"
"How are we going to find out if D. A. is right?" asked Phoebe worriedly. We all had the same thought.
That's when Ms. Frizzle got a sparkle in her eyes. "As my old astronomy teacher used to say: Star light, star bright -- there's always a way to find out if you're right! To the bus, class!"
"Welcome, crew of the Magic Space Bus," announced Ms. Frizzle as our old school bus changed into a Space Bus. "Our mission today is to find Dorothy Ann's mysterious space object, follow its path, and if necessary keep it from crashing into Walker Elementary!"
And off we went!
We had just taken off when suddenly something zoomed by. We raced to the window, but it had already burned out.
"Maybe that was Dorothy Ann's asteroid," said Keesha hopefully.
"No, it was a shooting star!" Phoebe said.
"That's right. But shooting stars are meteors -- space rocks," explained Ms. Frizzle. "Most meteors burn up when they enter Earth's atmosphere."
"And," added Dorothy Ann, "according to my observations, my asteroid is much bigger and is coming from the direction of Saturn."
Ms. Frizzle shouted some commands at Liz, our pilot. Before we knew it, we were zooming off toward Saturn.
Suddenly we noticed we were off course. We all fell to the right.
"What's happening?!" we yelled.
"We're about to cross paths with the Moon!" exclaimed Dorothy Ann.
We all rushed to the window. Sure enough, the Space Bus was heading right toward the Moon! We were going to crash!
"But we were heading toward Saturn -- not the Moon!" pointed out Keesha. "What changed our path?"
Just when we thought we were moondust, Dorothy Ann looked up from her map. "I figured it out," she announced. "Because the Moon is so much bigger than we are -- we're being pulled in by its gravity!"
"Can't we just change our path?" asked Phoebe.
"Right on track, Phoebe," responded the Friz. "I suggest an orbital insertion burn."
"In other words, step on it!" Carlos said.
Liz pressed some buttons. In no time at all the Space Bus was traveling on a path around the Moon instead of into it!
Finally, Liz pulled the Space Bus out of its path around the Moon. Then Wanda saw something fly by her window. "I think I see your asteroid!" she exclaimed.
Dorothy Ann rushed over to Wanda. "Wait a second," she said. "It's got a tail, which means it's a comet! I don't think what I saw through my telescope was a comet."
Dorothy Ann wrinkled her nose. "Gee, maybe this comet is what I saw!" she sighed as she looked out the window. "Now I'm not sure."
"I say we blast it to smithereens!" exclaimed Carlos. Phoebe remembered that a comet is made of ice and rock. "We don't have to blast it," she explained to Carlos. "We can melt it."
We were so excited about melting the comet, we could barely hear Dorothy Ann. "We destroyed the wrong space object," she said to no one. That got our attention.
"When we were going around the Moon," continued Dorothy Ann, "I got myself all turned around. To get to the asteroid we're going to have to go the other way!
Liz quickly turned the Space Bus around. Before we even settled into our seats, Dorothy Ann spotted a huge space rock outside our window. "There it is!" she announced.
"WHOAAA! That's one big space rock!" cried Tim.
Finally face to face with the asteroid, we had grown a little nervous. How were we ever going to get rid of it? we wondered.
"If we could melt a comet, how hard could it be to melt an asteroid?" reasoned Arnold.
We tried and tried to melt the asteroid, but it just wouldn't melt!
"It looks like it's made of metal," noticed Tim.
"Metal and rock, to be exact," responded Ms. Frizzle.
"If we can't melt it, what are we going to do?" asked Wanda worriedly.
Ms. Frizzle encouraged us not to give up. 'The path to success leads in many different directions."
"That's it!" exclaimed Dorothy Ann. "We don't need to destroy the asteroid. We just need to change its path so it doesn't hit our school!"
Then Carlos came up with a great idea. He had noticed earlier that the Space Bus had a two-seater space pod that could detach from the Space Bus. And now was the perfect time to use it!
He told us that attached to the space pod was a rammer-slammer magnet. With the magnet, the space pod could be attached to the metallic asteroid. Once attached, the space pod's rockets could pull the asteroid off course.
With the Friz as co-captain, Carlos pulled on his space helmet.
"Ready to launch!" announced Wanda, hand on the launch lever.
"LAUNCH!" exclaimed Dorothy Ann. And off they went.
"Arm the rammer-slammer magriet!" shouted Ms. Frizzle as the asteroid came into view.
"Here we go!" Carlos called out.
From inside the Space Bus, we watched the space pod attach itself to the asteroid.
Then Carlos and Ms. Frizzle fired the space pod's rockets. They tried and tried to move the asteroid. But it wouldn't move!
"The space pod's rockets aren't powerful enough to pull the asteroid out of its path!" exclaimed Dorothy Ann in a panic.
Then we noticed that the Friz and Carlos couldn't pull the magnet off the asteroid. It was stuck! What were we going to do?
Just when we thought we were doomed, Phoebe jumped up from her seat. "If the Space Bus becomes bigger and heavier than the asteroid, wouldn't our gravity pull it into a path around us?" she asked.
"Terrific! Then we can baby-sit the asteroid for the rest of our lives!" responded Wanda.
"Not if we get rid of it!" cried Dorothy Ann. She knew exactly what to do.
Dorothy Ann drew a picture of a huge Space Bus with the asteroid traveling in a path around it. "If we get very big the asteroid will swing around us," she explained as she pointed to her diagram.
On another piece of paper she drew a tiny Space Bus. "If we get small again, we'll lose our gravitational pull. Then we'll send the asteroid flying into the Sun and it'll be gone forever!" She sketched the asteroid flying off the page.
We thought Dorothy Ann's idea sounded out of this world. Except, what about Carlos arid Ms. Frizzle?
Leave it to Dorothy Ann to work this out, too. "Maybe they can't get the pod off the asteroid, but they can escape the pod," she said.
With the plan all mapped out, Dorothy Ann got on the microphone to explain it to Ms. Frizzle.
The asteroid moved closer and closer to Earth -- and to our school. We had to work fast.
"You have to make this bus as big and heavy as you can!" Dorothy Ann instructed Liz.
"At least as heavy as the Moon!" Arnold added.
The Space Bus shook and heaved. Before we knew it, we went from the size of a comet to the size o an as until finally we were as big as the Moon.
"It's working, Ms. Frizzle. The gravity of the Space Bus is pulling us in!" shouted Carlos.
"Prepare for ejection!" Ms. Frizzle exclaimed. Meanwhile, inside the Space Bus, we opened the hatch to let them in.
"Eject!" yelled the Friz.
And in they flew.
Here it comes!
It only looks as if it's going to hit us, but it's going to go around us in an orbit.
Now, all we had to do was get smaller at just the rig time and send that asteroid on a path into the Sun.
Dorothy Ann explained everything to Liz. "Shrin us back to normal size and release the asteroid from our gravitational pull."
We gathered around Liz and counted together. 'Ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one! Release!" Kapow!
"We did it!" we cheered as we shrank back to normal size. We watched the asteroid zoom toward the Sun.
"Way to go, Lieutenant Liz!" exclaimed Dorothy Ann, patting her on the head.
Mission accomplished, Ms. Frizzle directed the Space Bus toward Earth. "Prepare for reentry!" she exclaimed. "We're going home!"
Magic School Bus: Hit the speakerphone, Liz. Hello, Magic School Bus.
NASA: This is NASA calling. I understand you were trying to reach us.
Magic School Bus: Well, actually the kids were trying to reach you.
NASA: Understood. Well, we just read your book about space rocks. And we liked it.
Magic School Bus: Really?
NASA: However, for the future, not all asteroids are magnetic. Magic School Bus: Well, we, uh... we know that. But some are made of iron and nickel and those are magnetic. Right?
N AS A: Yes. And some are made of stone -- and those aren't magnetic, so let's just make that clear! All right?
Magic School Bus: Gulp! Yes, madame.
NASA: Another thing! It would've taken weeks for the asteroid to reach the Sun. You made it seem like it could happen in seconds!
Magic School Bus: We, uh... we had to fake it. Our book is only about 30 pages long. What could we do?
NASA: Well, okay. And one last thing. If your kids were really in a Space Bus, they'd be floating around, not walking around. But we probably know the reason why you did that -- you had to fake it, right?
Magic School Bus: Right! (Phew!)
Meteors and comets are bits and pieces of rock left over after the planets formed. When a space rock crashes into something, it's called a meteorite. Although meteorites have hit our planet in the past, it only happens once in a very great while. The chances of one even landing on your school are maybe once in a million years.
Large meteorites that have hit Earth have caused serious problems. Some scientists even believe that a very large meteorite may have caused the extinction of dinosaurs!
Comets are different from meteorites. They are made up of ice as well as rock. They have tails, and they melt whenever their orbits take them too close to the Sun. But if you wanted to melt one from here on Earth, you'd need a pretty gigantic mirror
Every class probably learns about plants and seeds. But not every class has Ms. Frizzle for a teacher.
When Ms. Frizzle does something, she goes all the way. She started by letting us plant a whole garden behind our school.
A photographer was coming to take a picture of our garden, so we all wanted it to look its best.
"To think that these beautiful tomato plants started from tiny seeds," Carlos said. "Add some soil, sunshine, water, and some tender, loving care, and you've got this great garden."
"And once that photographer takes our picture, we'll be famous!" Carlos said. "We could be on the cover of Plant It! magazine! Would you like me to autograph your seed packet, Dorothy Ann?"
"I'll think about it!" said Dorothy Ann.
Phoebe was not as excited as Carlos. "I wish I had the beautiful plant I raised at my old school."
Tim put the finishing touch on a drawing.
Phoebe smiled. 'That's it! Thank you, Tim," she said. "Still, I wish I had the real thing for our picture this afternoon."
Ms. Frizzle spotted the drawing. "Your plant looks lovely, Phoebe," she said. "Not to worry! It's a simple matter to stop by your old school on a little field trip!"
We all piled onto the old school bus. Carlos was worried that we might not get back in time for the photographer.
"This could take all day! Couldn't we fly or something,
Ms. Frizzle?"
"Excellent idea, Carlos!" she said. Suddenly the whole bus began to spin. It rose in the air as if it had wings. It did have wings! We were riding in a ladybug!
As we flew over buildings and trees, Phoebe began to look nervous. "What if Mr. Seedplot sees us?" she asked. "We never turned into ladybugs when he was my teacher."
Just then, we all saw a school below. Phoebe stared. "There it is!" she gasped.
The bus swooped in low through the school's garden. It looked like a jungle. "Here's the perfect landing pad -- I mean, petal," said Ms. Frizzle. The bus landed with a bounce and crawled along the petal of a huge flower.
We crawled one step too far. Suddenly, our ladybug bus slid into something wet and slippery.
"We're stuck in some goop!" Ralphie yelled.
"It's called nectar," Dorothy Ann said.
"Follow me, class!" said the Friz. She opened the doors an slipped out into the lake of nectar.
We didn't know it then, but Mr. Seedplot could have reached out and picked us. "Phoebe's plants certainly have grown well," he said to himself. "She worked hard on them. I really should take one to her new school for her."
Mr. Seedplot heard a buzz and looked up. "Ah, bees! I won't disturb their work right now," he said, turning to a patch of tomato plants.
We also saw the bees coming... and they were headed right into our flower.
"Yikes! Air raid!" shouted Arnold.
"Glory bee!" said the Friz happily. "As soon as these bees drink enough nectar, then we can crawl out of here. All aboard the ladybus, please. Next stop, anther!"
Dorothy Ann is amazing. Even upside down, she could remember what she had read that morning. "The anther is the part of the flower that makes pollen," she said.
There we were, on top of the anther, with bees buzzing all around us.
It was then that Phoebe caught sight of her old teacher. "It's Mr. Seedplot!" she yelled. "He'll see us! Do something! Fast!"
Ms. Frizzle stayed calm. "No problem," she said cheerfully. "We'll get out of here the same way the pollen does."
Ms. Frizzle pressed a yellow button, and we shrank again. Now we were as small as a grain of pollen.
"Whew!" said Phoebe. 'That was close!"
Carlos was not so happy. "We'll never get back to school in time for the photographer," he grumbled.
"Bee of good cheer. We're on our way," said Ms. Frizzle. "Hang on!" she called as the leg of a passing bee swept us up and away.
At my old school, we never rode on bees.
We ARE at your old school, Phoebe.
Off we flew, stuck to the leg of that bee. It was a short ride. At the very next plant, the bee bumped a flower and brushed us off, along with a lot of pollen.
"Here we are!" Ms. Frizzle announced.
"Where?" Phoebe asked.
Tim showed her his picture. "I think were on this center part -- the stigma" Tim said.
The bee had dropped a lot of pollen here. With a big sneeze, Arnold bumped into a grain of pollen, knocked it over... and fell down some kind of tunnel underneath!
Phoebe looked down the tube. "Mr. Seedplot will never spot us down there!" she said, and she hopped into the tube and slid down.
Ms. Frizzle beamed. 'That's the spirit! Take chances! Make mistakes! Check out pollen tubes! Yahoo!" she yelled as she, too, jumped down the tube.
We all slid to the bottom of the pollen tube.
"Now where are we?" asked Carlos. "Couldn t we just grab one of Phoebe's plants and go back to school?"
"I don't think we need a whole plant," Keesha said. "Look at this!" She pointed to something that looked like a big rock.
"I get it!" Dorothy Ann said. "When pollen from one flower lands on the stigma of another, it grows a pollen tube, finds one of these egg cells, and together they make a seed!"
Carlos still wasn't happy. "No seed can grow into a plant by three o'clock," he said.
"Not without some help," said Ms. Frizzle. She reached into the bus and pressed a button... and suddenly things went wild. The seeds were growing bigger and sprouting hair!
"We need to hurry things along a bit," said Ms. Frizzle. "Everyone on the bus, please!"
We all rushed back to the bus, the doors slammed shut, and we drove up and onto one of the biggest seeds.
As the seeds around us grew bigger, the flower burst open. We felt the sun shine in and a breeze blowing through the windows of the bus. Suddenly our seed flew into the air -- with us on board.
Away we flew on the back of our seed, carried along on gusts of wind.
Carlos still worried. "Can't we go any faster?" he asked.
"Well," Ms. Frizzle said, 'This is pretty fast for a seed. But there are seeds that travel by attaching themselves to dogs or birds... or people," she said, eyeing a man on a bicycle.
"No!" croaked Phoebe. 'That's Mr. Seedplot!" But she was too late. Our seed had landed in Mr. Seedplot's hair. "Oh, how embarrassing!" Phoebe groaned.
We were almost home, still stuck in Mr. Seedplot's hair, and we hadn't even been introduced. So we all shouted, "Hello, Mr. Seedplot!" -- except for Phoebe, who was too embarrassed to talk. But when Mr. Seedplot swung his head to see who was calling him, we flew off.
"Last stop!" Ms. Frizzle announced. She pushed a button. Poof! The bus got big again. She pushed another button. Poof. The seed, which had landed in our garden, grew into a tall plant with beautiful flowers.
Ah. there you are!" Mr. Seedplot said when he spotted us.
I brought one of Phoebe's plants, but I see that she already has one. Nice to see you again, Ms. Frizzle."
We had to agree. Ms. Frizzle is special, all right!
Letter to the Editor of Plant It!
Dear Editor,
I liked the pictures of the garden planted by Ms. Frizzle's class. But there are a few things I'd like to point out to you about your article.
First of all, I have never heard of a school bus that could turn into a lady bug or a grain of pollen.
Second, I don't see how anyone could be allergic to such a big grain of pollen. It could never get inside his nose!
Also, I would like to Know how anyone could make a seed or plant grow in just a few seconds. Even with my secret homemade fertilizer recipe, my plants take a long time to grow and to make seeds -- like days, weeks, or even months!
In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a plant quite like Phoebe's. Did you invent that plant?
And you must have done some Kind of trick photography on Ms. Frizzle's clothes, because no one dresses like that.
Your faithful reader, D. Tractor.
A Note to Parents, Teachers, and Kids
A seed is a tiny plant in a wonderfully efficient package, ready to grow when conditions are right. This book tells the story of seeds and the flowers that make them.
Pollen is manufactured by the anther, the top part of a flower's stamen. This is the male part of the flower.
The colors, markings, and scents of flowers attract animals such as bees and hummingbirds, which drink the flower's nectar and carry its pollen to other flowers. Pollen may also travel on the wind (as with grasses and many trees) or water (as with waterweed).
When pollen lands on the stigma of its own kind of flower, it grows a pollen tube that reaches down the pistil to the ovary, the female part of the flower. A sperm cell from the pollen travels down the tube and joins with an egg cell. The fertilized egg cell begins to divide and becomes a seed.
Seeds travel in many ways: on the wind, by attaching themselves to animals or to people's clothing, in the digestive tracts of animals, or by bursting forcefully from a pod or fruit.
Children can enjoy their own plant adventure by looking for these parts on different kinds of flowers, and by planting seeds themselves.
If you ever get Ms. Frizzle for a teacher, take this warning from me. Get ready for something wild and crazy to happen any time you hear these three little words: "To the bus!"
For example, take the time Dorothy Ann was sick and had to stay home on her birthday. Tim was working on the birthday present we were going to give her -- a model of the sun that played "You Are My Sunshine" when you wound it up.
Just when Tim was putting the final touches on D. A.'s present the phone rang. It was D. A.! She wanted us to come over to see her new telescope. We said we'd be over as soon as Ms. Frizzle came back from her teachers meeting. Then... enter the Friz!
"Take a look, Ms. Frizzle," said Tim, who couldn't wait to show off our musical model of the sun. But then something terrible happened. The model fell and smashed on the floor.
"It's too late to make another present," said Phoebe. "What are we going to do?"
As if answering Phoebe's question, the TV clicked on. It was on one of those channels where you can buy things, and this weird guy named Horace Cope was saying you could actually buy a star -- for just seven dollars! He said only three stars were left.
We were all taking out our dollar bills when Keesha shouted, "Wait a minute! I'm not spending my money on anything I haven't checked out myself!"
We all got on the Magic School Bus -- or should I say the Magic Space Bus?
When we looked down, we couldn't believe our eyes. We could see the whole earth. It looked huge at first, but then it looked smaller and smaller as we got farther away. The same with the moon. Then we couldn't see the earth or the moon at all, and the sun was so far away it looked like -- well... it looked just like a tiny star.
Then Ms. Frizzle told us something amazing -- our sun really is a star! It looks bigger than the other stars because it's so much closer to Earth.
Soon, we were cruising through space. The view was fantastic!
"Gee, look at all those teeny-weeny stars," said Phoebe. "I wonder if they'll get bigger when we get closer -- like the earth and the moon did."
"They'd better," said Keesha. "We need some way to tell them apart."
We turned on the space bus TV, and guess who was on? That good old stellar seller, Horace Cope!
"Now, you're probably asking how you can pick out a star because they all look alike, right?" said Horace. "Wrong! There are lots of different kinds of stars."
"For instance," he continued, "take this little baby. Only two million years old! Believe it or not, that's really young for a star!"
"To see it yourself," said Horace, "you'd have to fly at a speed of five hundred million miles an hour, and it would still take you about eighty years to get there."
Ms. Frizzle hit the controls, and we zoomed out into space. Maybe it would take Horace Cope eighty years to reach the baby star, but then he doesn't have the Friz for a teacher -- and he doesn't have a Magic Space Bus.
As we approached a beautiful swirling cloud, Ms. Frizzle said, "Hmmm... That baby star should be around here somewhere, but it's hard to tell with all this dust and gas."
"Dust and gas?" said Keesha. "Is that what these weird clouds are made of?"
Phoebe looked worried. 'This is not a good place for a baby," she said.
But Ms. Frizzle told us, "On the contrary, kids, it's the best place for a baby!"
"Hey," shouted Wanda, "there's the baby star!"
"For a baby, it sure is humongous!" said Arnold. "It's actually on the small side," Ms. Frizzle told us. "Only about half the size of our sun."
Tim was ready to buy. "Let's call up Horace Cope and get it for D. A."
But Keesha still wasn't sure.
Now Keesha was sure. "No way!" she said. "I'm not spending a dime on this star. It's too young and too wild. I want something bigger and brighter, with no dust around it. A star we can trust -- like our own sun.
I want a star that has a planet or two!
Back on the old TV, Horace Cope seemed to hear every word we were saying. "No problem!" he said. "Remember, there are still two stars left! And one of them is a five-billion-year-old middle-ager, right in the prime of its life. Planets at no extra charge!"
The middle-aged star sounded perfect! But the space bus computer told us it was one hundred million million miles away. (In case you were wondering, that's 100,000,000,000,000!)
No problem for the Friz! "Seats, everyone, and buckle up," she said. Then she got that look in her eye as she launched us into hyperdrive.
When the space bus slowed down, we could see our star. 'There it is, Keesha!" said Tim. "Just the kind of star we want."
Keesha still wasn't convinced. "It looks OK," she said, "but I want to be sure it's different from the baby star."
Of course, the Friz thought that was a great idea.
To get a closer look at our star, we got into the special star shut! Lucky for us, the shuttle came equipped with sunglasses -- or should I say starglasses?
We all waited to hear what Keesha would say. Finally, she spoke.
"I like the color a lot better," she said. "And it seems a lot calmer. No dust clouds around it, either. And I can see at least two planets. Wow, this star looks just like our sun!"
Everyone was really excited... until we got back to the space bus and heard Horace's voice on the TV.
"But I haven't even called in yet," said Keesha. "I guess someone bought it first," said Arnold. We all felt pretty bad until Carlos reminded us, 'There's still one star left."
All eyes -- and ears -- were glued to the TV. This was our last chance to get D. A. a star for her birthday.
"That's right, folks," Horace was saying. "Just one star left, and I've saved the best for last -- a genuine red supergiant! Twenty million years old and a hundred times bigger than the sun! What's more, I'll take fifty cents off the price if somebody buys it in the next minute. Check it out!"
As you can guess, with the Friz at the controls, we reached the red supergiant in a wink, just like magic. (Our bus isn't called Magic for nothing!) Keesha looked out the window. "Well, it's certainly the biggest star we've seen.
And I like the color," she said. "It doesn't have any planets, but there are no dust clouds, either. And it's no wild baby."
Tim called in and ordered the red supergiant. "We did it!" he said. "We got D. A. a star that's bigger and brighter than all the others!"
Ralphie looked worried. "Hey, wait a minute!" he said. "If it's so much bigger, how come we got it so cheap?"
"Yeah," said Wanda. "Horace Cope did seem in a hurry to sell the red supergiant."
"Do you think something's wrong with it?" asked Keesha.
"I don't see anything wrong."
"As my old friend Li Brarian always says," said Ms. Frizzle,
"you can't tell a book by its cover. Let's take a peek inside with the sneakapeekatron."
On the sneakapeekatron screen, we could actually see right inside our star. This is what we saw:
"Is it just me," said Ralphie, "or are the insides of our star shrinking?"
"Who cares what's going on inside," said Tim,"as long as it looks OK on the outside?"
After all our hard work, D. A.'s big, beautiful star exploded into smithereens!
"Why did our star explode?" asked Keesha. "It looked okay on the outside. It was bigger and brighter..."
"Well," interrupted Phoebe, "it was twenty million years old. "A stellar observation, Phoebe," said Ms. Frizzle. "Stars do grow old and go out. Some go out with a bang. They're called supernovas."
"Super mess," said Carlos. "All that's left of D. A.'s star is a big cloud of dust and gas."
"Hey, wait," said Keesha. 'This looks a lot like the place where we found the baby star. I'll bet another baby star is about to be born right here!"
"That's right!" said Phoebe. "Stars are made out of hot gasses squeezed together in a ball!"
Then we figured out the whole idea.
"Very interesting, but we still need a present for D. A.," Wanda reminded us. "It's too bad we can't gather up all this gas and dust and squeeze it together to make D. A. a new star."
"Who says we can't, Wanda!" said Ms. Frizzle. "Normally, it would take about a million years to make a star -- but since we have a magic bus, we can make it happen now!"
Thanks to the Magic Space Bus -- PRESTO! A brand-new star named Dorothy Ann was shining in the sky. Mission accomplished!
When we arrived at Dorothy Ann's house, D. A. was looking through the new telescope she got for her birthday.
"You're just in time to see a brand-new star in the sky!
"Actually, D. A.," said Keesha, "that's your birthday present. We named it Dorothy Ann in your honor."
"But how? I don't understand." For once, D. A. was confused. 'That's a long story," said Ms. Frizzle. "A story filled with dust and gas, with heat and..."
"Happy birthday, D. A.," we all shouted together.
Dear Lon,
You're right! The stars are too far away to reach with today's spacecraft. If we could travel that far, it would take a whole lifetime to get there and back. Unless you traveled faster than the speed of light -- and that's impossible.
Dear Scared,
Yes, our sun will go out -- but not for a very long time. It's been shining for more than four billion years -- and it has another four or five billion to go. So lighten up!
Pictures in the Sky: An Activity for Parents and Kids.
Since ancient times, people have seen pictures in different groups of stars. These groups of stars are called constellations.
You've probably heard of a group of stars called the Big Dipper. It would look like a long-handled cup if you drew lines between the stars -- like a giant connect-the-dots picture. The two stars in the front of the cup point to the North Star in the handle of the Little Dipper. The dippers are parts of the constellations Ursa Major (Big Bear) and Ursa Minor (Little Bear). In Greek mythology, Ursa Major was once a beautiful nymph, Callisto, and Ursa Minor was her son, Areas. Zeus, king of the gods, loved Callisto, and when his angry wife tried to kill her, he turned Callisto into a bear. Not knowing the bear was his mother, Areas tried to kill her. So Zeus turned Areas into a bear and put them both in the sky.
The ancient Greeks thought another constellation looked like a beautiful princess in a story. Princess Andromeda's mother bragged that her daughter was more beautiful than the daughters of the god of the sea. The god was so angry that he sent a giant sea monster to devour everyone in the kingdom. The monster was about to eat poor Andromeda when the hero Perseus flew by on his winged horse, killed the monster, and rescued the princess.
See if you can find these groups of stars. Find other constellations, too -- and read their stories.
Our class really digs having Ms. Frizzle for a teacher -- she makes every day fun! And today was no different.
It all started at the International Show and Tell Competition. Our class was to show Arnold's rare rock collection. The only problem was, Arnold was nowhere to be found!
"Where is Arnold?" cried Phoebe, nervously looking at her watch. "The show's about to start!"
"I don't know what you're worried about," said Dorothy Ann. "I'm the one who has to go out there and tell them what we have!"
We were beginning to panic when in raced Arnold. "Y-you guys are really going to thank me!" he said, gasping for air.
"Where's your rock collection?" asked Dorothy Ann.
"At home. I brought this instead," said Arnold. He pulled out of his bag a strange-looking hoop with a colorful net attached. "Is this great or what?"
"What is it?" asked Tim.
"I don't know," replied Arnold. "I'm just the 'Show' part. Dorothy Ann is the Tell' part."
Dorothy Ann looked at the hoop carefully. She turned it over and over in her hands. "I've spent the last two weeks digging up rock information. I don't have a clue what this thing is!" she finally exclaimed.
What do we do now?!
We send Arnold home to get his rocks!
There was no time for Arnold to go home and get his rocks. But we couldn't enter the competition with this hoop. We weren't even sure what it was!
Suddenly Ms. Frizzle showed up. "You're just in time," Dorothy Ann told her. "Arnold brought this weird hoop for Show and Tell, but nobody knows what it is!"
"Well, as my nephew Conrad always says, 'When in doubt, figure it out!"' Ms. Frizzle said.
The first thing we figured out was that Arnold found the hoop in a trunk that belonged to his great-aunt, the famous archaeologist known as Arizona Joan.
"When I was little," said Arnold, "Aunt Joan used to tell me stories about what she did as an archaeologist -- how she searched for things that were left behind by people a long time ago. She'd figure out how people lived based on the stuff she found."
"So, did she ever tell you what this was?" asked Wanda. She never figured it out," replied Arnold. "But I do have this journal of her adventures."
"Maybe there are some clues in here," said Dorothy Ann, taking the journal from Arnold.
Just then, Ms. Frizzle got that gleam in her eyes. 'To the bus, class!" she called.
"Wait," cried Arnold. "If you're talking about a field trip, we can't go now! What about the show? We're about to go on!"
Dorothy Ann turned to Arnold. "Unless I can TELL everybody what your Aunt Joan found, there is no SHOW!" she shouted.
Ms. Frizzle gave Arnold a two-way Show and Tell-evision so he could hear and see us at all times.
"So how do we figure out what this hoop is for if the people who used it aren't around to tell us?" Wanda asked Ms. Frizzle as we boarded the bus.
Ms. Frizzle took the hoop from Wanda. "Archaeologists call something like this an artifact," she said.
"So an artifact is anything made by people who lived a long time ago?" Tim asked.
"Exactly, Tim!" Ms. Frizzle said.
But we still couldn't figure out why someone made the hoop. Then Ms. Frizzle told us that we'd have to guess the reason!
"Archaeologists put clues together and make a guess, Ms. Frizzle explained. 'They call that guess a hypothesis.
We put together our clues. One: The hoop was made of wood. Two: The hoop was strong. Ralphie guessed it was some sort of a war thing -- like a shield. But Tim thought it was a net.
"Okay, okay," said Dorothy Ann. "So we have two good guesses -- now, what...?" But before she could finish, the Friz turned the bus into a lab.
"Now, if an archaeologist is going to try out an artifact, the first thing he or she does is make a copy of that artifact," Ms. Frizzle said. She made a copy and gave the original artifact to Liz to bring back to Arnold. Then we joined Ms. Frizzle at the large computer screen.
"Now, we know the hoop was made long ago," began Ms. Frizzle. "But what else do we know?"
"It says here that it was found near Fort Walkerville," said Dorothy Ann, looking at Arizona Joan's journal.
As the Friz entered this information, a map of Walkerville appeared on the screen.
"We know there had to be trees, since it's made of wood!" continued Ralphie. And with that, some trees sprouted up on the screen.
"And there had to be people living there! Somebody must have made it!" exclaimed Tim.
Dorothy Ann looked in the journal again. "Arizona Joan writes about hunters and farmers," she said.
"So maybe we can suppose that the people there sometimes fought over territory," guessed Ralphie.
Ralphie's guess was good, but we didn't know how to find out whether or not his guess was right.
Then a smile crossed Ms. Frizzle's face. We had a feeling something was about to happen -- and we were right! One by one, we were tossed into the computer screen!
Suddenly we found ourselves in the place we had "supposed. The Suppose-a-Tron had taken what we knew, added our guess, and created a "what-if' world. As we looked around our what-if world, all we could see was a tribe of angry-looking people.
"We programmed them for a fight," Ms. Frizzle reminded us. "Better get your shield ready to test that hypothesis!" she shouted to Ralphie.
Running for cover, we watched as an arrow flew right through the hoop's webbing -- TWANG! -- and into a tree -- THUNK!
"So much for your hypothesis," we yelled to Ralphie as we jumped back through the computer screen to safety.
"Man. That was close!' exclaimed Ralphie.
We were just catching our breath when Arnold's voice came through Ms. Frizzle's Tell-evision.
"Attention, class. Come in, class!! You guys know what time it is?" he cried. "We go on stage any minute now!' "We're working on it!" replied Carlos. "But we can tell you it's NOT a war thing.
"It says here that Arizona Joan found remains of canoes near where she found the hoop," noted Wanda, her nose in the journal.
Then Tim picked up the hoop. "Look at this webbing!" he said. "It makes the hoop perfect for grabbing and scooping things. I guessed it was a net, so now I say it's a fish net!"
Ms. Frizzle entered the guess into the Suppose-a-Tron. "C'mon, class, let's make a splash!" she said. Then she dove into the screen. We were a little worried, but we followed her. Splash! Splash! Splash!
Paddling downstream, we noticed that the water was full of fish. But every time Tim tried to catch fish with the hoop, they would just slip through the net or swim around it.
"Too bad you can't catch one!" Dorothy Ann said.
Just then, Ms. Frizzle pointed out that we were heading straight for the rapids.
Meanwhile, back at the Show and Tell competition, Arnold turned on his Tell-evision to see us shooting down the rapids. "I can't believe this is happening! I go on any minute now!" he cried. But Liz wasn't worried. She was busy playing, throwing Cheesie Wheesies through the rolling hoop.
We made it through the rapids safely. But we still hadn't figured out what the hoop was.
Then Keesha picked up the hoop. "When you think about it," she said, "why would they give this hoop all these beautiful colors if they were just going to stick it in the water?"
"So, based on that observation, Keesha, what would you say it is?" Ms. Frizzle asked.
"A hat!" she answered.
Dorothy Ann agreed that the hoop could have been a hat. "It says in the journal that Joan found shells and beads that people used to decorate their clothing."
So we guessed that the hat was worn as part of a dance celebration and put our hypothesis to the test. We added dancers, drums, and nighttime to the Suppose-a-Tron.
Before we knew it, we were dancing at a harvest celebration.
"Don't you just love to dance!" sang Keesha as she struggled to keep the hat on her head. 
"There's no way to keep this hat on," she cried. "No bands, no ties, no straps..."
"And there are no marks on the rim to show where they could have been," noticed Phoebe.
It looked as if Keesha's hypothesis was wrong.
We were starting to think we'd never figure it out! But Ms. Frizzle wasn't worried. "I bet my bottom buttons there are more hypotheses where that one came from! she said.
Back at the bus we called Arnold through the Tell-evision. "Come in, Arnold," we said.
"Dorothy Ann," Arnold said, "what's taking..."
"Was there anything else in the bag besides the hoop?" D. A. asked, interrupting him.
We watched on the screen as Arnold pulled stuff out of the bag. Some baby pictures, booties, a pacifier, and suddenly... some arrows!
The arrow tips looked dull, and seemed to be decorated just like the hoop. We guessed that the arrows and the hoop went together. But how, we wondered.
Suddenly Dorothy Ann realized that the arrows would probably fit through the holes in the hoop's net. "I need one of those arrows!" she exclaimed.
And with that she raced to the auditorium. She grabbed an arrow from Arnold and zoomed back to the lab.
"You're leaving me alone again?" Arnold called after Dorothy Ann. Suddenly he heard our school being announced. "Join me in welcoming the contestant from Walker Elementary School," the announcer said.
Arnold felt sick. "Um. Hi..."he said into the microphone. 'This is... this is... an artifact -- something from long ago. And from objects like this, we can figure out how people lived their lives -- if you know how to read the clues," he continued.
Back at the lab, the Friz made copies of the arrows while Dorothy Ann added information to the Suppose-a-Tron. Before we knew it, we were following Dorothy Ann through the screen into a Hoops and Arrows competition.
"What's going on?" we asked.
"Don't you get it?" responded Dorothy Ann. "What's round, different colors, and goes with something pointy?" she asked excitedly.
"A dartboard!" exclaimed Wanda.
"So maybe our artifact was a game," suggested Phoebe. "And maybe you have to get the arrow through the holes!"
This sounded good to us. Even long ago, people needed to have fun.
Then we noticed that the rim of the hoop was worn down. We guessed that the hoop didn't stay still like a dartboard. Instead, maybe the hoop was rolled along the ground while other people tried to throw their arrows through it. 
We were having so much fun playing Hoops and Arrows that we forgot all about poor Arnold.
But Arnold was busy talking to the audience. He was telling them that the hoop might be a shield.
"Ooooh!" cried the audience.
"Well, actually," said Arnold, lifting the hoop to his face, "it would be kind of useless because arrows could go right through the holes..."
Oh," sighed the crowd.
"Um," Arnold continued. He knew he had to keep the audience's attention. "Pretend you're paddling along a river, trying to catch fish. You sweep the water," he said as he pretended to be catching fish with the hoop. 'Then realize you better get a paddle that doesn't leak!"
Arnold's heart was pounding. "Imagine you're at a ceremony," he told the audience. 'The fire roars, the drummers pound, the dancers sway... and then..."
"WHAAAT???!" cried the audience.
"You... you wonder why you brought this hat because there's no way it will stay on your head when you dance," sighed Arnold as the hoop rolled off the stage. The audience groaned.
But as he chased the rolling hoop, he suddenly figured it out!
"Ladies and gentlemen," Arnold announced, "believe it or not, this artifact is something kids know really well... it's a game! The object of the game was probably to get the arrows through the rolling hoop!"
"You see," Arnold told the audience, "this is only a hypothesis -- a good guess. But the things left behind by people who lived long ago, like this hoop, give us clues about how they lived. And it's up to archaeologists like us to fit the clues together."
The audience clapped loudly for Arnold and stood on their feet.
We ran into the auditorium just as Arnold was being handed the top prize. He bowed and said, 'This award doesn't belong to me alone, it belongs to all my classmates at Walker Elementary. Thank you!"We're always going on strange field trips in Ms. Frizzle's class. The other night, the Friz took us all to a drive-in movie. It was an old science fiction movie about a giant praying mantis. There was no one in the drive-in but us.
The movie was kind of funny, but Phoebe wasn't enjoying it. She thought it was full of mistakes about insects.
"There's no such thing as a fifty-foot praying mantis," Phoebe said pointing at the screen. "And if there were, you would trap it instead of trying to destroy it."
Carlos wasn't enjoying the movie, either. "Insects aren't my favorite thing in the world," he explained.
Just then, a spider crawled onto Carlos's seat. He jumped up. "What I really hate are spiders!" he yelled.
Phoebe trapped the spider in a plastic cup. "Spiders aren't insects, you know. They have eight legs and insects only have six."
After the Friz passed around some popcorn, we settled back to watch the movie. The army, led by General Araneus, was trying to destroy the mantis. They zapped it with bug spray.
Phoebe was getting really angry.
"That was mean!" she said. "If I were in that movie, I'd trap the mantis, take it somewhere safe, and let it go."
Ms. Frizzle's eyes lit up.
"You'd trap it?" said the Friz. "Sounds like a plan to me!" She started the Magic School Bus's engine.
"Next stop, the silver screen!" Ms. Frizzle shouted.
Wait a minute! I thought coming to this movie was our field trip?!
The bus lifted off of the ground. We were flying toward the movie screen! Before we knew it, we were inside the screen. We were actually part of the movie!
"We've got to stop General Araneus from hurting the mantis! Phoebe said.
Dorothy Ann had a book about the film. "We need to find the Military Command Center.
The command center was easy to find. It looked like a giant cheeseburger. General Araneus was inside.
"You can't kill the praying mantis!" Phoebe begged.
But the general didn't understand. "Don't worry.
Of course I can kill it!" he said.
There was no time to trap the mantis now. It was coming after us!
"To to the bus!" Ms. Frizzle cried.
We made it to the bus just in time. General Araneus started pressing all of the bus's buttons.
A giant slide shot out of the bus. We all slid out of the bus back into the drive-in and landed on the ground. But one thing was different. We were all really small. Even smaller than a popcorn kernel.
Something else was different, too.
"Oh, no!" Dorothy Ann cried. "Liz and the bus are trapped in the movie!'
They're not the only ones who are trapped!" Keesha said. She and Phoebe were stuck in a web! The web was attached to two speaker poles "It's sticky!" Phoebe said. "We can't get out."
Wanda and Ralphie pulled on the strands of the web.
"It's too strong," Wanda said.
Ms. Frizzle smiled. "We wanted to find a trapper, didn't we? Well, the best way to tap into a trapper is to get wrapped in her trap!
Then a fly came buzzing around. It got trapped in the web with Phoebe and Keesha.
Keesha pulled on one of the web lines. "I wonder where this one goes?" she asked.
Suddenly, a spider poked its head out from behind a speaker box and crawled toward them.
"That's an orb spider," Phoebe said. "You pulled on its signal line and told it dinner was ready."
While we were walking around the drive-in, the movie was still playing. We could see that Liz was in trouble. We had to get back in the movie and help her! We ran to the screen.
But something was blocking our way.
Phoebe wasn't scared. "It's only a centipede," she said.
"It seems like there are spiders everywhere we turn," Arnold said. Dorothy Ann nodded. "According to my research, you're never more than three feet away from a spider," she said.
"We've got more trouble!" Wanda cried. "Beetle at six o'clock!"
The beetle ran after the trap-door spider. The spider crawled back into its hole and shut the door.
The spider won't let him in," Wanda said.
"I wouldn't let him in, either," Arnold added.
The beetle couldn't get to the spider, so it started running after us. We ran as fast as we could. Keesha spotted another trapdoor.
"In here!" Keesha yelled.
We ran down into the hole. Ms. Frizzle shut the trapdoor tight. The beetle pulled and thumped, but it couldn't get in.
"This sure is a nice, sale place to hide, Wanda said.
Soon the beetle gave up. We climbed out of the hole.
"Let's go!" Phoebe cried. "We've got to get back into the movie and help Liz!"
We all ran to the screen -- except for Ms. Frizzle. She was caught in another trap! A spider was hanging upside down from a tree. It was holding onto a web shaped like a pouch -- and Ms. Frizzle was trapped inside.
"Say hello to the dinopis spider -- trapper extraordinaire!" Ms. Frizzle said. "She doesn't wait for the food to come to her trap -- she takes her trap to the food."
The dinopis spider lifted Ms. Frizzle off of the ground.
We were too late. General Araneus grabbed Liz and drove off in a pizza delivery car. He was going to use Liz to catch the praying mantis.
"We've got to stop General Araneus before he gets to the mantis," Wanda said.
"Only a giant spider could trap that general," Arnold said.
Phoebe's eyes lit up. "Arnold, that's a great idea. Isn't it, Ms. Frizzle?" Ms. Frizzle nodded. "Come on, bus, do your stuff!"
The Friz pressed a button, and the bus started turning into a giant spider!
"Eight legs?" Ms. Frizzle asked.
"Check!" Phoebe said.
"Spider's silk spinners?" Ms. Frizzle asked.
"Check!" Phoebe said.
"Then buckle up, class," said Ms. Frizzle. 'Trapping season has just begun!"
We hid the bus in the ground, under a trapdoor. When we heard the general's car speed by, we made our move. But the general got away.
Wanda scratched her head. "Why didn't it work? For prey on the ground, use a trap on the ground."
Phoebe pointed to the sky where the general escaped in a helicopter.
Never order mushrooms and anchovies on the same pizza?
We finished the web just in time. It worked! General Araneus got stuck on the sticky web strands.
But not for long. He jumped out of his shoes and slid onto a strand that wasn't sticky.
"He's getting away!" Phoebe yelled.
"Forget trapping the general," Phoebe said. Our only chance to save Liz now is to trap the mantis!"
"But the mantis is too big for a trapdoor!" Tim said.
"And we can't wait for it to fly into our web!" Dorothy Ann added
While we were figuring out what to do, Ms. Frizzle was singing
"Someone's in the kitchen with dino... someone's in the kitchen with dinopis..."
"That's it!" Phoebe said. "Prepare Operation Dinopis Spider!"
General Araneus tied up Liz inside a giant bug trap. The mantis was about to take the bait. We had to act fast. We hung from the branch of a nearby tree. Then we spun our web. Now!" Phoebe yelled.
We dropped the web onto the mantis. We trapped its head!
We made more silk, faster and faster, until the praying mantis was completely covered.
Phoebe stood up. "I hereby declare this mantis trapped!" General Araneus was the only one who wasn't happy, "I want my bait!" he screamed.
"Sorry, Liz belongs with us," Wanda said.
"But here's something you can have," Ralphie said.
Ralphie sprung the general's bug trap. The general was trapped in his own trap!
"Good work, class!" Ms. Frizzle said. "Let's get out of here."
Liz climbed into the bus and turned the key. The bus changed back into its normal size. The praying mantis was normal-sized, too. We hopped in the bus and drove out of the movie screen.
"So, Carlos, are you still scared of spiders?" Phoebe asked as Ms. Frizzle drove us back to school.
"No way!" Carlos said. 'The way they use their traps to stay safe while they catch their prey -- it's too much."
Ms. Frizzle smiled. "Well, as my great-uncle Arachnid used to say, There's nothing like a spider to teach you everything you need to know.'" Or is there?" Phoebe wondered. "Who knows what we'll learn on our next field trip!"
Producer: Araneus! What are you doing here?
Araneus: My agent told me this story was supposed to be about spiders -- ALL spiders, but you just showed three! Producer: We focused on the orb, trap-door, and dinopis spiders because the Kinds of traps they make were important to the story.
Araneus: Understood, but there are more than a hundred thousand different Kinds of spiders and hundreds of ways they hunt and trap. In fact, although most spiders make silk, only some of them spin webs.
Producer: We Know that -- and we showed as much as we could while still giving YOU as much screen time as possible.
Araneus: I certainly agree with that. But spinning a web can taKe hours -- you had it happening in minutes! Producer: Well, we could have taKen more time on the webs, but that would have meant cutting back YOUR role. Araneus: Cutting back MY role...? I think you made the right decision. Keep up the good work, soldier! Good-bye. Producer: I'm glad I got out of that sticky situation!
This tickles my funny bone.
You never know who's going to show up for a visit to Ms. Frizzle's class. Take the other morning, when Keesha arrived. She was following a tiny guest. "Meet my friend the ant. Isn't she amazing? I wonder where she's headed?" asked Keesha.
"This is no time for antics," said Carlos. "We've got to pick a project for the science fair."
The Friz was tossing things from the closet. "Ah, the passion of science," we heard her say. "Where is...? Oh, there it is!" The Friz put something on her head. It seemed to be a pair of antennae. She looked like our visitor.
In the meantime, Keesha had lost her ant. Arnold found her on his Mallow-Blaster cookie.
"So that's why she came in here." said Keesha. "She was looking for food."
Then Keesha got an idea. "Maybe we could do something about my ant for the science fair," she said.
"Well," said Dorothy Ann, "according to my research, where you find one ant, there are usually more nearby."
"That's right. Dorothy Ann," agreed Ms. Frizzle. "Ants live together in nests."
"But what could we do with ants?" asked Phoebe.
Keesha looked at Liz. The class lizard was holding a video camera.
"That's it!" yelled Keesha. "We'll make a movie."
Phoebe shook her head. "At my old school, lizards weren't allowed to make movies," she said.
My ant is a natural star.
This whole thing seems unnatural to me.
"I'll write it," offered Carlos.
Phoebe wanted to help Carlos. Keesha would be the director, and her ant would be the star. The rest of us would play ants. Liz, it seemed, would do the filming. And Ms. Frizzle would take care of costumes.
It'll be about an ant with a long nose called Elephant.
Just as Keesha began to give orders, her ant ran out of the room. We all followed.
Keesha's ant soon caught up with lots of other ants.
"Look at them all!" exclaimed Keesha. "How do I know which one is mine? I've lost my star!"
What do you call an old ant?
Dorothy Ann had a book about ants. "According to my research, your star has been telling the other ants about Arnold's cookie," she explained.
"Excellent observation, Dorothy Ann. Ants don't really talk," said the Friz, "but they do communicate."
The Friz told us that a food-finding ant is a forager ant.
"I've got it!" shouted Ralphie. "We'll make a western starring an ant that rounds up food."
"We can call it Food Dude," said Carlos.
Our movie can be a Western.
Oh, no! I'm getting that shrinking feeling again!
All of a sudden, Ms. Frizzle got that look she sometimes gets. Then the Magic School Bus honked.
"All aboard," Ms. Frizzle said.
We each found a seat and fastened our safety belts. It's good to be prepared when you're going on a field trip with Ms. Frizzle. Anything can happen.
Soon the bus was spinning and shrinking. When it stopped, the bus looked like Arnold's cookie. It tasted like it, too. But where were we?
"Different ants do different jobs," explained Ms. Frizzle. "Remember the forager ants that find food?"
Suddenly, the bus was lifted up.
"Hey, we're being foraged!" cried Wanda.
"Keesha, is the movie going to star a forager ant?" Phoebe asked.
"And are we going to costar as food?" Arnold added. He sounded nervous.
"No," said Keesha.
The bus landed with a thud.
"Where are we?" asked Dorothy Ann.
"We're on location," said Ms. Frizzle.
Keesha looked out the window. "It's an anthill!" she called. "It's perfect. We'll meet the ants up close and personal. Come on, Liz."
Liz and Keesha left the bus -- but not for long! Hundreds of giant ants came after them.
"Who let them on the set?" yelled Keesha.
"They look like they're guarding the nest," said Phoebe. Great!" said Ralphie.
Ralphie said, "It'll be perfect for the wide screen with stereo sound."
"Smell-o-vision," said the Friz.
We had no idea what the Friz was talking about.
"Guard ants use their antennae to smell if we're friend or foe," she told us. "Ants don't understand words, but they do understand smells."
I hope we smell friendly.
The ants began to smell us.
"The ants are checking to see if we smell like them," explained the Friz. "Their bodies make scented chemicals called pheromones." With that, she pushed a handle on the bus and sprayed us!
"Now we smell like these ants," said the Friz. "So the guard ants will let us into the nest."
She led us from the bus. "As I always say, class, when visiting a nest, smell like the rest."
The guard ants checked us with their antennae. They wanted to be sure we were friendly. Then we entered the tunnel to their nest.
"Hey, look at this!" yelled Tim. He pointed to hundreds of ants running back and forth. The place was crawling with them.
"Okay, places everyone!" yelled Keesha in her best movie director's voice.
But we weren't quite sure how to act like ants.
"What about makeup, Keesha?" asked Dorothy Ann.
"And what's the plot? Who's the star?" asked Carlos.
"Maybe we should get to know the ants better," Phoebe suggested.
"Good idea, Phoebe," said the Friz. "Understanding begins with observation," she told us.
The movie can be a rome-ants. You Know, a romance!
Those ants look like they're Kissing.
"I love it!" cried Keesha. "See the ant, feel the ant, be the ant." We watched some ants in action.
"This ant's rubbing its head, and this one is licking itself," said Phoebe.
"They're cleaning themselves," Tim figured out.
We saw two ants passing food from mouth to mouth.
One of the ants gave a sticky blob to Arnold. He knew what it was right away -- part of his cookie. "Oh, sure, give it back to me after you've chewed it," Arnold grumbled.
But a movie about ants sharing food didn't seem very exciting.
Carlos crossed that idea off his list. "Okay," he said. "This movie isn't going to be about a forager ant, a guard ant, or a food-carrying ant."
Keesha was still looking for a star for our movie. As she walked toward one of the tunnels, some ants grabbed her and raced away. Then some other ants picked up the rest of us. Now things were getting very exciting! We were part of a great chase scene!
Suddenly, they dumped us in front of a chamber.
"Wait a minute!" yelled Tim. "What's in there?" He pointed into a room where ants were carrying something.
"They're like little worms," observed Dorothy Ann.
An ant gave one to Arnold.
"You look like you're holding a baby," said Dorothy Ann. "Maybe it's a baby ant."
Ms. Frizzle explained that baby ants are called larvae. Just one was a larva. And that's what Arnold was holding.
"Who ever heard of a movie about larvae?" asked Keesha. We watched the ants move the larvae.
"I'll bet they're trying to keep the larvae warm," said Tim. Ms. Frizzle explained that these were nurse ants. "Their job is to move the young around the nest to keep them the right temperature. When they get a little older the larvae will become pupae."
Rock-a-bye, baby, everyone cares.
When the air cools, they move you upstairs.
But Keesha didn't want to do a movie about a larva or a pupa. "Where's the excitement?" she asked.
"What about an egg?" asked Phoebe. "Where do ant eggs come from anyway?"
"Good question, Phoebe," said Ms. Frizzle. "The eggs came from the queen!"
Keesha loved it. "That's it -- a royal star!" she cried.
Carlos and Keesha began to look for the queen. While they were looking, Phoebe noticed water coming through the walls.
"Heads down!" called the Friz. The nest started to shake and the tunnel caved in.
As we picked ourselves up, ants ran past us. There were ants everywhere. "Look!" yelled Tim. "They're already repairing the nest!"
"That's right," said Ms. Frizzle. "They're builder ants."
Keesha was still on a mission. "To the queen!" she shouted. "There's only one and she's our star."
At first we didn't even see her.
"There she is," said the Friz. "She's the biggest one."
"But she's not doing anything," said Wanda.
Ms. Frizzle said the queen was the only ant who laid eggs. Keesha was upset. "The queen laid an egg. The end," she said. "I thought a movie about ants would be perfect for our science project. But I was wrong!" She turned and ran out of the nest.
Phoebe found Keesha sitting in the rain.
"No movie, no story, no star," Keesha said sadly. "What kind of star just sits there and lays eggs?"
"Without the queen, there wouldn't be eggs," Phoebe said. "So," said Keesha, "without the ants that bring food, there wouldn't be a queen."
Suddenly, she and Phoebe understood. All the ants worked together. Without the forager ants, there wouldn't be food. Without the builder ants, there wouldn't be a nest. Without the guard ants, the nest would be attacked.
Keesha and Phoebe ran toward the bus. "They're all stars!" exclaimed Keesha. "Every ant in an anthill has a job to do. Just like we each have a job to make this movie.
"Forget the movie!" said Arnold. "There's a mud slide!"
"It will wipe out the anthill," Keesha said. She spotted a magnifying glass on the ground.
"Action!" yelled the Friz.
We grabbed the magnifying glass to block the mud. We saved the nest just in time!
Back at school, our science movie was a big success.
We each had a different part, and the movie couldn't have been made without everyone's help!
Some More Antics
Producer: Okay, Liz, we'll let everyone know how much work you did on the movie.
Producer: Hello?
Caller: You work on the Magic School Bus, right?
Producer: Er, I'm just one of many who work on it.
Caller: Well, an ant colony has thousands of ants, but I only counted 137 in your show.
Producer: Oh, you must be an accountant! Ha, ha! Well, you're right. There are thousands of ants in one nest. But we couldn't afford to hire that many extras.
Caller: There are also thousands of different kinds of ants. You only showed one kind.
Producer: Right. There are ten thousand different Kinds of ants.
Caller: You didn't say anything about all the ants in the movie being female.
Producer: Right again. Almost every ant in a colony is female. The only thing males do is mate with the queen. You Know, you pretty smart.
Caller: Actually, I'm brilliant!
Producer: That's it. One more call. Hello, Magic School Bus.
Second Caller: This is the Academy Awards returning your call.
Producer: I have a question about the rules. Is it possible to nominate a lizard for best camera work?
A Project for Parents and Kids:
You know that ants live and work together. You also know that they share food. What foods do ants like? Try this to find out.
Locate an anthill.
Fill several jar lids with different foods. Try using honey, salt, maple syrup, and flour.
Place the lids in a circle about one yard from the anthill.
Try to answer these questions:
How long does it take the ants to find the food?
Which food or foods do the ants seem to like best?
What do you notice about the way the ants travel to the food?
How do you think the ants tell one another about the food?
Our teacher, Ms. Frizzle, is always surprising us. So on her birthday, we decided to surprise her. We planned a big party. We had balloons, streamers, confetti, and even noisemakers. "We thought of everything," said Carlos.
But Arnold wasn't so sure. "Something's missing," he said.
We decided to put away the party things for later. We were upset -- what was a birthday party without a cake?
When Ms. Frizzle came in, she saw our sad faces. "I see you've heard the news," she said. 'The bus is not working well, so we won't be able to go to the bakery. I think I have to cancel our chemistry field trip."
"Bakery? What does a bakery have to do with chemistry?" asked Ralphie.
"A bakery is a small chemical factory," said the Friz.
Dorothy Ann added, "Baking is chemistry because things are mixed together to make something new."
Suddenly, Carlos realized that a bakery did indeed make something new -- cakes! "Oh, Ms. Frizzle," he said, "our education wouldn't be complete without a trip to this chemical factory. "
"Maybe the bus can get us to, the bakery, said Ms. Frizzle. "Class, it's time for a field s rip!"
Ms. Frizzle wasn't worried. She pushed a button. Suddenly, the tiny bus sailed through the mail slot of the bakery door. Inside, we could see a baker and some customers.
While the bus zoomed around the bakery, we took a good look at the cakes. Not one was chocolate!
"What will we do?" whispered Arnold. "The Friz likes chocolate."
Carlos thought hard. "We'll bake a cake," he said.
"It will be our chemistry experiment!" said Dorothy Ann. "How will we get Ms. Frizzle out of the bakery?" asked Wanda. "We don't want her to see what we're doing."
Carlos remembered an auto parts store next to the bakery. He told the Friz that it might have the parts she needed to fix the bus. Ms. Frizzle thanked him, put on her jet pack, and took off. She left Liz in charge.
By this time, the bus was the size of a moth. When the baker saw it flying around, he became angry. He got his flyswatter and chased us into the kitchen. Finally, Liz set the bus down behind some jars. The baker couldn't see us.
Luckily, some customers came into the shop, so the baker left us alone.
"Come on!" said Carlos. "We've got work to do." He began to read a cookbook. "First we have to gather and measure the ingredients."
Everyone had a job. Ralphie got two eggs. But one egg got away from him. Wanda and Tim got the flour and sugar. Liz found a way to measure the salt and cream of tartar.
Arnold had some trouble carrying the baking soda. First he bumped into Dorothy Ann. Then he knocked over a bottle of vinegar. When the baking soda spilled on the vinegar, there was quite a reaction. 
When you mix vinegar and baking soda, you get a gas.
Great chemistry!
Keesha poured the milk, while Phoebe somehow got the butter. And Ralphie finally caught the runaway egg at "eggs-actly" the right moment.
Just then, Ms. Frizzle came back. Dorothy Ann thought fast. She had to keep the Friz away from the cake we were baking.
"Ms. Frizzle, could you help me with a chemistry experiment?" she asked. They began to experiment with the vinegar and baking soda.
"This is hard when you're half the size of a hot dog," complained Arnold.
"It could be worse," Ralphie told him.
Suddenly, it was. The bus rattled and shook. Then it shrank again -- and so did we. Even tiny grains of salt and sugar looked like building blocks and diamonds.
"Let's go!" called Carlos. "We've got to make this cake before the baker catches us."
He was right. So we hopped on the bus and whipped into action. Last of all, we added the best and most delicious ingredient, the chocolate.
You might say the bus did all the work.
A stirring performance!
But the baker was our problem. When he saw the bus in action, he thought it was the moth again. So, he called the bug control company. For some reason, no one there believed that a moth could bake a cake.
Meanwhile, Dorothy Ann and Ms. Frizzle were still doing chemistry experiments. When the Friz wanted to find the rest of us, Dorothy Ann had to stop her.
"What would happen if I put a whole bunch of baking soda into a bottle with the vinegar?" she asked.
The Friz loved the idea. 'There's only one way to find out," she said.
So Dorothy Ann filled the bottle. The mixture fizzed over. It was a gas! Then Dorothy Ann put a balloon over the top of the bottle. The gas pushed out the sides of the balloon. The balloon got bigger and bigger.
"Just like a tire filling with air," said Dorothy Ann.
That reminded Ms. Frizzle of the bus. 'The bus needs new tires," she said.
As the Friz blasted off to check the bus tires, Dorothy Ann's balloon popped. Everyone cheered, though, because Ms. Frizzle hadn't seen us.
We went back to work.
"The next step is to mix all the ingredients together," said Carlos.
Once again, the bus helped us. As it beat the batter, it forced in air.
The baker was looking for us again. We had to do something quickly.
"Submarine doowwwnn!" yelled Carlos.
With that, the bus dove into the batter.
When the baker saw the bowl of batter, he was surprised. "When did I make this?" he wondered. "I must be going do-nuts!"
He poured the batter into a pan and put it in the oven. Things began to heat up.
"Why is it getting so hot?" cried Wanda.
"I am pleased to announce." said Carlos, "the addition of the last ingredient -- HEAT!" Ralphie gasped. "Carlos?"
"Yes!" said Carlos. "We're in the oven!"
That meant one thing -- we were about to become dessert!
Just when we started to panic, Ralphie pointed to a funny figure moving through the batter. Liz opened the bus door and the Friz came in.
"Phew!" she said. "It feels like somebody forgot to put up the heat shield."
Quickly, Liz pressed a button and the shield went up. The temperature dropped.
"As I always say," said the Friz, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the oven."
"Look!" yelled Phoebe. 'The batter's moving."
Dorothy Ann explained, "According to my research, the baking soda is making bubbles."
"The batter's not the only thing getting pushed around," pointed out Arnold.
He was right. The bus was also moving. We could hear a strange noise, too.
"It's steam!" said Carlos.
The Friz didn't seem worried. "It's so hot that the water in the batter is becoming vapor," she said. It's making bubbles."
Wanda noticed something else. "The batter is starting to look kind of solid." she said.
And so it was. The cake was done.
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Arnold. "We're going to have our cake and be eaten, too!"
Things did look bad. Ms. Frizzle tried some levers on the bus, but nothing worked.
"We're doomed!" cried Arnold.
Back at school, things were normal again. Well, as normal as they ever are with Ms. Frizzle. She really seemed surprised. At least, she was very pleased.
When she asked, "Class, where did you get such a lovely cake?" we giggled.
Carlos explained, "The baker just gave it to us... said it was ruined... something about a moth.
Ms. Frizzle laughed and said, "Chemistry is a piece of cake," She was right!
Boy: Is this the bakery that the Magic School Bus visited? Baker: Yes, yes it is.
Boy: Mmmm. Those donuts look good. I'll bet you a donut I can tell you something really important that was left out of the book.
Baker: Impossible!
Boy: It was...
Baker: Was it that Dorothy Ann is a little young to be doing those experiments?
Boy: Not really. Ms. Frizzle was there. Everyone knows you need a grown-up when you do chemistry experiments. And Dorothy Ann was wearing goggles.
Baker: I'll bet you two donuts that some people think chemicals are bad for them.
Boy: No, some chemicals are good. It depends on what you use them for.
Baker: Okay, three donuts that maybe you think that things like salt and sugar don't really look like building blocks and diamonds.
Boy: They do under a microscope.
Baker: You're bluffing. I'll bet you all my donuts that you can't tell me what was missing.
Boy: You never said how old Ms. Frizzle is!
Baker: Upon my pastry! You're right about that!
From the desk of Ms. Frizzle:
An Experiment for Parents, Teachers, and Kids:
Dorothy Ann showed you what happens when baking soda and vinegar are mixed together. What happens if something else is added? Try this to find out.
Fill a pitcher with water.
Add three teaspoons of white vinegar and two teaspoons of baking soda.
Drop in five or six salted peanuts. Watch what happens.
Here's why. The vinegar and baking soda make a chemical reaction and cause bubbles (made of carbon dioxide). Bubbles tend to gather on surfaces, so they cling to the peanuts.
Since peanuts are light, the bubbles lift them up to the top of the pitcher. At the top, the bubbles break and in a while the peanuts sink again. At the bottom, the peanuts gather more bubbles and up they go. When you're in Ms. Frizzle's class, things never happen the way they're supposed to. Like the other day, when Liz, the class lizard, was missing. We tore up the whole classroom, but we couldn't find her anywhere. Even her habitat was missing!
Maybe she moved into another classroom.
Liz would NEVER leave us!
Wanda didn't notice. She was busy looking for clues.
"I found a note! It's written in lizard," Wanda cried. "Can you read it, Ms. Frizzle?"
"Let's see," Ms. Frizzle said. "Claw polish, scale moisturizer, fang paste..."
"That sounds like a packing list," Tim cried. "Then Liz DID move out!"
Arnold found another clue -- a page torn out of a magazine. It showed a picture of a big white building.
"I bet this is where she went," Arnold said. 'The address is right here!"
"The place where Liz moved is called Herp Ha," Arnold said. Wanda shook her head. 'The rest of the 'Ha' is torn off," she said. "It's not Herp Ha -- it's Herp something else!"
"Okay, but what's a Herp?" Ralphie asked.
Ms. Frizzle smiled. "Good question, Ralphie! Quite simply, a herp is a reptile."
"And Liz is a lizard, which makes her a reptile," Keesha said. That still doesn't explain why Liz would pack up and leave us," Wanda said. "She could be in danger. We have to rescue her!"
The bus pulled up to the address. Wanda read the sign in front of the building.
"Herp... Haven!" she said. "I told you it wasn't Herp Ha. "Haven means a safe place," said Dorothy Ann.
Ralphie saw another sign. "Yikes! An alligator crossing. Before the class could get a close look at the alligators, a large car pulled up and a woman got out. She was holding a leash -- with a giant tortoise on one end!
A tall man in a white suit opened the front door.
"I want my tortoise toasted and stuffed, just like the last one," the woman told him.
The class couldn't believe their ears.
"Toasted and stuffed? It sounds like that turtle is about to become somebody's dinner!" Carlos cried.
"What if Liz is next?" Phoebe wailed. "If only we could get inside!"
Wanda tried to get inside, but it didn't work.
The man at the door pulled out a long scroll of paper. "There is a list of requirements that must be met before entry is allowed " he said. "Body temperature: changeable; sweat glands: none; scales or skin: allowed; hair: not allowed. So you see, I cannot let you in. Good day!" He handed Wanda the list and shut the door with a loud bang.
Back on the bus, the class examined the list.
"Body temperature: changeable," Arnold read.
Carlos sighed. "Well, that leaves us out. Our body temperature stays mostly the same."
"That's why we're called WARM-blooded," Keesha said.
Tim looked thoughtful. 'Then, is a reptile cold-blooded?"
"All reptiles are cold-blooded!" Ms. Frizzle replied.
Dorothy Ann was reading a book. "I've got it!" she cried. "In ancient times, Greek soldiers built a huge wooden horse and they hid inside it to fool their enemy. It was called a Trojan horse."
Phoebe stood outside the bus. Ms. Frizzle pulled a lever. WHOOSH! Green smoke filled the air. When the smoke cleared, Phoebe saw that the bus had shrunk It looked just like a life-sized alligator.
"It's a BUS-igator now!" Phoebe cried.
Phoebe put a leash around the busigator and walked up to the front door.
From inside the busigator, we heard a loud splash. "We did it!" Wanda cried. "We're in!"
"But where exactly are we?" Ralphie asked. We looked out of the busigator's front windows We were in a pool of water near a waterfall. An island filled with shade trees and plants sat just a few feet away. Around the busigator, all kinds of reptiles were crawling -- including alligators!
"How do we get out of here?" Ralphie asked.
"We can't go out there!" Arnold said nervously. 'Those are real snakes and alligators crawling around!"
"We can't find Liz by staying in here," Wanda pointed out.
"If we become reptiles ourselves, we can look for Liz without that guy in white bothering us," Keesha suggested.
Ms. Frizzle smiled. "Good thinking, Keesha!" She walked over to a strange machine built into the bus. It was covered with buttons and flashing lights.
"Kids, meet the Reptilator," the Friz said. "It'll turn us into reptiles in no time."
Ms. Frizzle pushed a water bucket toward us. Keesha slithered over to the bucket and stuck her tail in the cold water.
Wow! I can feel my temperature dropping already!" she exclaimed. Everyone crawled toward the bucket -- except for Wanda.
"We're more worried about staying the right temperature than we are about finding Liz," Wanda said.
Back at the busigator, Arnold and Dorothy Ann were freezing.
"Let's move the busigator to where it's w-w-warmer," Dorothy Ann chattered.
But the bus wouldn't budge! Arnold and Dorothy Ann left the busigator and tried to push the heat lamp toward it. They didn't go far before Arnold noticed they were being followed -- by a swarm of reptiles.
"Wake up, Liz!" Wanda cried.
Ralphie stared at Liz. "She's not sleeping. It looks like she's frozen!"
"There's one thing I don't get," Keesha said. "If it feels so cold, how come I'm not shivering?"
"Reptiles can't shiver," Wanda said. "Shivering is just something people do to get warm."
Maybe the bus is hibernating... just like Liz was!
Phoebe raced out of the cold room. As she warmed up in Phoebe's arms, Liz started to wake up.
Soon, we ran right into the busigator in the reptile habitat! Wanda looked inside the bus. "Arnold, DA, get us out of here.
"We c-c-can't," Arnold said. 'The bus is so c-c-cold it stopped working."
Ralphie groaned. "If we don't get the bus moving, we could be reptiles for the rest of our lives!"
With Phoebe's help, we made it to the heat lamp. The busigator warmed up, and pretty soon it was moving again. We followed Phoebe outside. We were free!
Suddenly, a pile of nearby rocks started moving. But they weren't rocks -- they were alligators!
"Do something, Ms. Frizzle!" Phoebe yelled.
The Friz pulled some more levers, and soon we all turned back into kids again. The busigator changed back into the size of a regular bus, but now it was a giant lizard! Phoebe climbed aboard
"I run Herp Haven," Harry added. It's a luxury spa and restful resort for weary, worn-out reptiles!"
"So you weren't going to stuff Liz?" Arnold asked.
Harry laughed. "Hardly. But we did make sure she had enough to eat. It wasn't difficult, because reptiles often go for weeks without eating. "
"Ms. Frizzle, why didn't you tell us this was a good place to be?" Phoebe asked.
The Friz smiled. "I started to tell you, but I just love it when you figure out things for yourselves."
Warm-blooded creatures like me and you don't have to worry about regulating our own temperatures. Our bodies do it for us automatically. But if you were a cold-blooded creature such as a reptile, you'd need to move from place to place to keep yourself at the right temperature. Nothing makes a herp as happy as when the temperature's just right!
Normally, cold-blooded animals do a pretty good job of staying at just the right temperature. But if for some reason it gets too cold around them and they can't move to a warmer place, they might bury themselves under leaves, or find shelter underground -- kind of like hibernating.
How else are you different from a coldblooded animal? Take another look at Harry Herps's list on page 10 to find some ways. Can you think of anything else that makes you different? You wouldn't believe the crazy things that happen in Ms. Frizzle's class! Like the day it was our class's turn to open the school. We came to school early and got our job list: ring the bell, unlock the doors, raise the flag, make up a greeting for the day, turn on the lawn sprinklers, set up the coffee machine in the teachers' room, prepare attendance sheets.... There was so much to do!
There must be an easier way! 
While we were wondering how we could do all those jobs, Mr. McLean came in with a humongous box. He told us that Mr. Ruhle, our principal, wanted us to set up what was inside -- whatever it was.
You know how I said crazy things happen in Ms. Frizzle's class? Before we even opened the box, one of those things happened.
Ms. Frizzle popped out!
Then she announced, "Mr. Ruhle's new super-duper computer has arrived!"
"A computer!" shouted Carlos. 'That's it! We'll get the computer to do our jobs!"
Sometimes Carlos has good ideas, and this was definitely one of those times.
First we hooked up the screen (which, by the way, is called the monitor).
Then we plugged the keyboard into the main part of the computer. We plugged in the mouse and the printer, too. Carlos turned on the computer. But it didn't do much of anything.
"Right now," explained Ms. Frizzle, "this computer is just an idle machine. It needs instructions to tell it what to do."
"But we don't know how to give it instructions," said Carlos. "What we need is a computer expert to help us!"
Boy, were we happy when the very person we needed wheeled into our classroom. It was Carlos's little brother, Mikey -- the computer dude! Luckily for us, Mikey had come to school early to clean out his desk.
Mikey sure didn't waste any time. He started plugging cables into the computer. He told us to go out and plug the free ends of the cables into the bell, the doors, the flagpole, the loudspeaker, the sprinkler, and the coffee machine. When we came back into the classroom, Mikey told Carlos to record this morning's greeting. Here's what Carlos said into the tape recorder:
"Hi! How are you? Nice to see you! Thanks for coming to school, and enjoy your day!"
Then Mikey plugged the tape recorder into the computer, too.
OK, Mikey! Upload the workload!
Mikey started typing on the keyboard. We couldn't understand the signs on the screen, but he was telling the computer to do all our chores.
Now I'll save what I typed.
Instructions written and stored!
On the screen, we could see a little picture of a school. There were also pictures that stood for each job we had to do. Ms. Frizzle told us that those little pictures are called icons. To choose a job for your computer to do, you just use the mouse to point to a certain icon. Then you click the mouse.
"Just click on the school icon and watch all your jobs get done," said Mikey.
We couldn't believe it, but everything started happening at once. We even heard Carlos greeting the school over the loudspeaker.
Hi! How are you?
But Mikey wasn't listening to us. He was looking inside the computer. He looked as if he were trying to get inside the computer!
"Boy, I'd love to know what it's like in there," he said "I mean, what really happens to my instructions once I've typed them?"
Ms. Frizzle was getting ready to send Mikey inside the computer! She put a set of earphones on his head.
"Now you can have your own guided tour," she promised. "And since the fastest way to get information into a computer is on a disk," she continued, "take a risk and make like a floppy disk!"
Mikey's chair started spinning around really fast. As it spun, it got flatter and flatter until Mikey turned into a disk! Then, like magic, the disk floated right into an opening in the computer.
We were still staring at the computer -- with Mikey inside -- when things got really weird. The school bell rang again. Carlos's greeting came over the loudspeaker again. From the window, we could see the flag coming down and going back up the flagpole, and the sprinkler went on right in
Mr. McLean's face. The computer was doing all our jobs all over again! 
The computer's doing something wrong.
Mikey can fix it.
The next thing we knew, the computer was doing all our jobs for the third time. In fact, it was repeating our jobs every minute! We were in big trouble now.
"Let's go in there and get Mikey out before Mr. Ruhle gets here," suggested Phoebe.
"Splendid idea, Phoebe," said the Friz, getting that twinkle in her eye.
You know our school bus is magic, but did I remember to mention that it comes when the Friz whistles? Well, it does.
Inside the disk drive, a motor started spinning us around fast. Then something that looked like a long metal toothbrush began sliding along the disk.
"What's with the toothbrush thing?" Carlos asked.
"That's the read/write head. It's reading instructions and other information stored on the floppy disk," Ms. Frizzle explained.
In my old school we read, but we never got read!
"It will change the information on the disk into electrical signals and send it to the main part of the computer.
The read/write head was getting awfully close, when the Friz said, "OK, bus, do your stuff!" Just in time, the bus turned into a teeny blimp -- with us in it! Now we had a really good view of the inside of the computer, but we couldn't see Mikey anywhere.
"Wait!" said Wanda. "Mikey was going to find out what happened to his instructions, right? And instructions are information, right? And the information is in those flashing signals, right? So if we follow the signals -- we find Mikey!"
Would you believe that panels in the ceiling of the bus opened, and skateboards came down for all of us? If you've ever been in Ms. Frizzle's class, you can believe anything!
Next thing we knew, we were skateboarding through the inside of the computer.
The information goes Electricity Express!
"Wow! Where are we?" asked Wanda.
"You're skating on the cables that run from the disk drive to the motherboard. The motherboard is the heart of the computer!" shouted Ms. Frizzle from the blimp.
The motherboard was full of wires. And the wires were carrying electrical signals like the ones coming in from our floppy disk 'This must be how information travels around the computer, said Ralphie.
Next the information led us to a big square thing in the middle of the motherboard. But still no Mikey.
"What's going on in there, anyway?" wondered Wanda. "It's all wires and lights."
Ms. Frizzle explained that the square thing was the part of the computer that's in charge of everything that happens inside.
"It handles every bit of information that comes in -- and goes out," she said. 'That's why it's called the central processing unit -- or the CPU for short."
Little did we know that Mikey was right nearby, listening to a guided tour through his earphones. Here's what it said:
"You have just entered the computer's random access memory -- also known as RAM. A computer can't follow a list of instructions if it can't remember them. These RAM chips hold the instructions..."
Meanwhile, back at school, the computer was still doing our jobs over and over and over and over and... Well, let's put it this way: Arnold was not having a good day. Make that ditto for Mr. McLean.
But what could we do? We still couldn't find Mikey.
Mikey couldn't hear us because of his earphones, but we could hear what Mikey's tour guide was saying: "Welcome to the hard drive, where disk are hard instead of floppy. This is where information is stored so it can be used over and over again.
"Mikey!" shouted Dorothy Ann. "You gotta help us. Something's wrong with the computer!"
"Wrong?" said Mikey, who had finally taken off his headphones. "I checked everything out, and it's working great. Information's coming from the keyboard and the floppy disk and getting changed into electrical signals just like it's supposed to. And the CPU's deciding what to do with 'em."
The computer's doing our jobs over and over!
"We've got to get out of here!" yelled Wanda.
"No sweat!" said Mikey. "Computers send information out as well as bring it in. We'll just go out with the output."
"Look!" shouted Ms. Frizzle from the blimp. 'There's some information on its way out to the printer now. Just go with the flow!"
Don't ask me how, but the whole blimp turned into a bunch of skateboards, and we followed the information to the printer. The Friz joined us and soon we were on our way out.
Boy, was Arnold ever happy to see us popping out of the printer!
Mikey went straight to the computer, while Ms. Frizzle explained to us that a computer isn't really smart. It's just a machine.
"A computer needs instructions it can understand to tell it what to do and how to do it," she said. "Those instructions are called a program."
"And if there's even one teeny-weeny mistake in the program," added Mikey, "everything goes kaflooey!"
And anyone can make a mistake -- even Mikey.
Mikey printed out his program so we could check it out.
Let's see, he said. Bell, doors, flag, greeting, sprinklers coffee, attendance sheets..."
"No wonder everything is happening again and again," said Mikey. "The computer's doing just what I told it to do!
"Which is all computers ever do, in the Friz.
Mikey changed the word minute to day, stored the new and improved program in the hard drive, and we were up and running.
Just in time, too. Because Mr. Ruhle was on his way to our classroom! "What's going on here?" he asked. 'The school seems to be getting ready by itself!"
When we explained that the computer was doing our jobs for us, Mr. Ruhle looked mad. He said he had told us to set up the computer not program it.
"Am I supposed to be pleased?" he asked.
Well, I'm not!
I warned you about the crazy things that happen in Ms. Frizzle's class. Do you believe me now?
(Editor's note: They will help you tell what is real and what is make-believe in this story)
My little sister's a computer whiz, like you. She told me that you can't really see the electronic signals in a computer. I guess the illustrator made them visible just so we kids -- and the kids in the book -- could follow them.
We asked our teacher if you can really make a computer do your work for you, like you guys did. He said that since computers can turn switches on and off, anything that can be run by a computer. Of course the instructions have to be perfect -- but you that already, Mikey.
A computer disk doesn't look or feel floppy at all. So why is it called a "floppy disk"? You can find the answer by "dissecting" a disk. (An empty one!)
Look at your disk. What you see is really the housing or disk case. The disk itself is inside. The metal thing is the shutter. Slide the shutter so you can see the disk underneath. The shutter protects the disk when it's out of the computer.
Use a butter knife to pry off the shutter.
Then pry apart the two halves of the housing. (Don't worry if the housing breaks.)
There's the disk! It's the brown or black plastic circle with a metal center. Pick it up.
See why it's called "floppy"? The metal center, or hub, keeps the disk in place while it spins.
Uh-oh, we're out of space! If you want to know more about how a disk works, take Ms. Frizzle's advice. Make like a scientist and research! Look in a book about computers, or in an encyclopedia. Ms. Frizzle is the weirdest teacher in the school. Strange things always seem to happen in her class. But it had gotten to be so cold outside, not even Ms. Frizzle could do anything too unusual.
Or so we thought.
It all started in the cafeteria when Arnold ordered a steaming cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows. By the time he took his first sip, the heat had escaped out an open window. Arnold was left with yucky cold cocoa!
"Where did all the hot go?" he asked. That's when Ms. Frizzle got that snowy sparkle in her eyes.
The next thing we knew, we were on the Magic School Bus, but now it had skis and tractor treads instead of tires. We were traveling through one of the coldest places on Earth -- the Arctic -- and we didn't even have our coats on!
At my old school, we would have worn jackets if we visited the Arctic.
Ms. Frizzle pressed a button and jackets dropped from the top of the bus, but they were too thin to keep us warm. And while the Friz was searching for the warm jacket button she drove the bus into deep, ice-cold water!
When we got to the other side, the bus was dripping with ice and the engine was frozen.
Then the bus just stopped, and we were STUCK IN THE ARCTIC!
We had to figure out a way to warm up the bus and get back home. We were cold, but poor Liz was freezing.
"Liz is cold-blooded. She gets most of her heat from outside her body," explained Phoebe as she tucked Liz inside her jacket. "Don't worry, Liz," she said. "I'm warm-blooded. My heat is your heat."
Just then, Wanda pulled out an old wooden trunk from under a seat. Inside we found a bunch of goggles. Ms. Frizzle said they were "heat peepers."
It was amazing. When we put them on, we could actually see heat moving out of our bodies.
"Moving heat must mean losing heat," said Phoebe. We could see the heat escaping right out of the top of the bus.
The heat was escaping fast. We needed a heat source. Luckily, Arnold found some wood inside the old trunk. In no time, a fire was burning, and Ms. Frizzle was cheerfully brewing hot lemon-water tea.
The wood didn't last long, so we broke another wooden trunk into pieces. Out fell some hot-water bottles.
Ms. Frizzle poured tea into a hot-water bottle. With our heat peepers, we could see the heat going into it.
Carlos tucked the bottle inside his jacket. He felt warmer right away.
Arnold looked at the other hot-water bottles on the ground. "What if we cover the engine of the bus with hot-water bottles?" he suggested. 'The heat from the bottles will move into the engine, the engine will warm up, the bus will start, and we can go home."
It was a good idea, but it was too late.
This hot-water bottle is my own personal heat source.
Don't panic, Ralphie and Phoebe! Go with the floe.
Just then, the ice we were standing on cracked into pieces. The bus floated away, and so did Ralphie and Phoebe -- and Liz!
We had to save Ralphie and Phoebe, but we were freezing. "Look," said Carlos, "the heat from my hot-water bottle is almost gone."
"We have to find something else to keep ourselves warm," Arnold said. He looked at Dorothy Ann's book. "We could use that!"
Arnold started to rip out pages from the book and stuff them inside his jacket. "I hate to hurt a book, but this is an emergency."
"Putting this paper between us and the cold air might keep the heat from escaping," Arnold explained.
Very good, Arnold. You're having an insulation inspiration!
The paper did slow down the loss of heat a little bit. Ms. Frizzle said the paper was acting like insulation -- it was holding in heat. But we still needed a better heat source if we were going to save the bus and get home.
"There's a fur coat and a heat source due north of here, said the Friz. "Follow me."
Ms. Frizzle was right. This heat source was warm, furry, and smelled like... fish. Suddenly, we got it. This was no ordinary heat source. This was a POLAR BEAR!
"Run!" said Carlos.
"Hide!" said Tim.
"Oh bad, oh bad, oh bad," said Keesha.
Ms. Frizzle came to the rescue. She whipped out the porta-shrinker and zap -- we were as small as a bee's knees.
We whirled into the bear's fur.
Where did they go?
We were tiny but warm. We could see the heat coming out of the polar bear's body and getting trapped by its thick, tangled fur. The fur kept in the heat, just like the paper under our jackets kept in our body heat.
Suddenly, our polar bear got itchy. We tried to hang on, but we couldn't. It was time to make tracks.
Back on the bus, Phoebe and Ralphie were pretty cold. Phoebe searched the bus for blankets. But when she reached inside the blanket compartment, she came out with a handful of gloopy blubber.
"What kind of blanket is this?" asked Phoebe.
"It's a fat blanket," said Ralphie, looking through his heat peepers. "And it sure can keep in the heat."
Suddenly, the bus tipped dangerously. Ralphie and Phoebe looked out and saw walruses trying to climb onto the ice floe!
"Is it just me, or are those walruses floating in freezing cold water without losing much body heat?" Phoebe asked. "And they don't have thick fur like polar bears."
"I'll bet all that blubber in their bodies traps their heat -- just like the fat on your hand," Ralphie said.
"If it's good enough for a walrus, it's good enough for us," said Phoebe. Then she and Ralphie covered themselves from head to toe in gloopy fat.
Look, I'm as warm as a walrus.
But Phoebe and Ralphie weren't out of cold water yet. Their ice floe was breaking apart -- and we couldn't reach them!
"We have to save them," said Keesha.
"But we won't last in that icy water," said Dorothy Ann.
"Never fear," said the Friz. "Where there's a Liz, there's a way." She gave a whistle, then called out, "Hit it, Liz!"
Liz ran into the bus and pulled a lever on the dashboard. Suddenly, the roof of the bus opened and something came flying across the water right at us.
Actually, we've been blubbered. Good work, Liz!
We felt warm in our blubber suits.
We were glad to be back together. But we still had to find a way to warm up the bus so we could get back home.
We tried exercising. The heat escaping from our bodies melted the fat and warm up the bus -- for a while. Then the heat escaped out the top of the bus.
We need something to trap the heat and keep it inside," Arnold said.
Luckily, the bus had special igloo-building equipment. So we built an igloo around the bus to trap escaping heat. Ms. Frizzle explained that the snow on the igloo can trap heat because snow is filled with tiny air pockets. The heat moves into these air pockets and gets blocked.
As soon as our igloo was built, we went back to exercising. It was a big workout. The heat from our bodies was kept inside the igloo, so the bus started to warm up. Before you could say, "jumping jack," the engine was ready to go, and we put the blubber to the road.
We were just in time. Ms. Frizzle turned the bus into a helicopter and got us out of there just before the ice floe broke into tiny pieces.
Back at home, Arnold ordered another nice mug of hot cocoa But this time, he wasn't going to let the heat escape. He wrapped up his drink in a home-made, double-layered, zipper-lidded, quilted cocoa-cozy.
Well, as Ms. Frizzle always says, "Ah, the inspiration of insulation!"
Wet suits contain millions of tiny air pockets that trap the heat and keep people warm in cold water. But we think blubber is better. Stay warm.
Sorry. Heat peepers are magic. You can't usually see heat move from place to place, but you can feel it.
Get messy.
Did you ever wonder about the inspiration for insulation? Try this experiment to find out which material makes the best heat trap.
Choose several different materials. Here are some suggestions: cotton, a pillowcase, a sleeping bag, tinfoil, paper. What are your ideas?
Make a prediction. Which material do you think will insulate best? Second best? Write down your guesses.
Now ask an adult to help you toast some bread. Toast one slice for each material you are testing.
When the toast is ready, quickly wrap each slice inside one of the insulators. Keep each piece of insulated toast in the same place and wait three minutes.
Now, unwrap the toast and touch each slice. Which slice feels the warmest? Was your prediction correct?
Try this experiment again to see if you get the same result. Write down what happens each time. (But don't go outside dressed in a pillowcase!) In Ms. Frizzle's class we were getting ready for our concert at the Sound Museum. But something was wrong. It was the instrument that Carlos had made. It looked terrific, but as Ralphie said, it sounded "ploopy." How could we play "Concerto for Invented Instrument" with a ploopy sound?
Did you hear that?
This is not music to my ears.
Ms. Frizzle was the only one who didn't seem worried. She encouraged Carlos by saying, "Just keep asking questions and you'll keep getting answers!" Then she hustled us onto the school bus. We were late for the dress rehearsal of our concert. We had to get to the Sound Museum in a hurry.
During the ride Carlos worked on his instrument.
"I don't think it's getting better," said Dorothy Ann.
"He needs more time," agreed Tim.
That's when the bus began to act strangely. This happens a lot when the Friz is driving.
Suddenly the bus overheated.
"We're stuck," said Phoebe.
"We'll miss the dress rehearsal," said Dorothy Ann.
"I'll pull the bus," cried Ms. Frizzle, "and you can push it!"
I don't think Carlos is getting anywhere. Gasp!
While we pushed, Carlos kept working. His instrument looked better and better. It sounded worse and worse. Meanwhile, we kept hearing all these spooky sounds.
Then, we heard a different sound. Ms. Friz called it "mellifluous." It was also coming from the old creepy house. We wanted to get back on the bus, but the Friz cried, 'Take chances! Make mistakes!"
Then, she rang the doorbell. Boy, did it sound off!
Carlos heard the amazing sound, too.
"Listen to that! I need to find out what's making that sound," said Carlos.
"I knew I should have stayed home today," Arnold said. When the door swung open, Carlos and Ms. Frizzle walked right in. The rest of the class followed.
"Helloo-ooo-ooo," called Ms. Frizzle.
"Helloo-ooo-ooo," her voice echoed back to us.
No one greeted us. The door swung shut, and it wouldn't open. We were stuck in the house!
"I wonder who lives here," said Keesha nervously.
Then Ms. Frizzle told us about the owner, Professor Cornelia C. Contralto. "Cornelia was an eccentric collector of sounds," she explained. "She disappeared about a hundred years ago."
We weren't surprised. Who would want to live in this house?
"Class," said the Friz, "this house is actually the Sound Museum."
That did surprise us -- especially since the museum was closed for the night. And we were in it!
"We have the whole place to ourselves," said Ms. Frizzle. "Great!" said Carlos.
Not everyone was so happy. Ralphie was worried about Professor Cornelia C. Contralto. "I bet she's a ghost," he said. "Maybe she's in the house seeking the perfect sound." This was an interesting thought. The house was full of surprising sounds.
It was time for bed. The museum just happened to have enough kid -sized beds for everyone. We got way under the covers. Carlos was still thinking about his instrument. So far nothing had improved it.
We heard that sound again! Someone or something had answered Carlos. He ran from the room to see what it was. We scrambled after Carlos. Before we could stop him, he had opened a door... and we were in a strange room. Every time we turned around, we saw something different. We ran from a jungle to the mountains. Ms. Frizzle was there, yodeling. Her yodel bounced from one mountain to another. It was an echo.
From there we tumbled into the Giant Room. It was full of gigantic musical instruments. Dorothy Ann pulled the string of a harp. The string moved back and forth and made a musical sound.
Ms. Frizzle said, "That movement is a vibration." Keesha added, "When the string stops vibrating, the sound stops."
Carlos asked, "Are all sounds made by something vibrating?"
It didn't take long to find out. Tim and Phoebe played the drum by making it vibrate. Wanda rang the gong by making it vibrate. They not only heard the sound, they felt it, too!
Then Ms. Frizzle rang a giant bell. The vibrations filled the room. Suddenly the wall cracked open. We followed the Friz through the wall and onto a stage.
Ms. Frizzle gave Carlos some funny-looking glasses. They must have been magic. They let Carlos see sound waves!
Sound waves look like the ripples in a pond," he cried. 'They're circles within circles, moving outward.
We all put on magic glasses. It was fun making sounds and watching the vibrations. The sound waves started in one place and moved out in all directions.
Ms. Frizzle showed us something else. First, she sang a high note. The circles came out close together. Next, she sang a low note. The circles were farther apart.
"Class," said the Friz, "high sounds are made when something vibrates fast. Low sounds are made by something vibrating more slowly."
Then Carlos got a really soundproof idea. "It doesn't matter how my instrument looks. What matters is how it vibrates."
He dashed back to the bedroom. His instrument was gone!
We were nervous. We heard that amazing sound again. Then the lights went out.
"That sound is coming from the closet door!" cried Dorothy Ann.
Carlos opened the door -- and disappeared. He had fallen into a dungeon!
That didn't bother the Friz. She jumped right in, too, and shouted, "Follow me, kids!"
This seemed like an unsound idea, but she was our teacher. ARGGGGH! Soon we were all down there together.
The sound was bouncing off the walls of the long hallway. We followed the sound waves around the corner to the end of the hall.
The sounds were coming through a door. Carlos opened it. Inside we saw someone sitting at an organ. It was Cornelia C. Contralto, the third! The original Cornelia had been her great-grandmother. From behind the organ, Cornelia pulled out Carlos's instrument.
Carlos knew exactly what to do. He began taking things off the instrument. "With so much stuff on it, the instrument can't vibrate the way it needs to," he explained.
Ah, the sound of music! At last!
We gave a terrific concert! Everyone loved the amazing sounds from Carlos's invented instrument. Cornelia liked them so much, she asked for the instrument. She said no Sound Museum was complete without it. She was right!
A Funny Phone Call:
Uh-oh! There's that phony phone ringing again. Who could it be?
Magic School Bus: Hello?
Caller: I think your imagination got away with you in this book.
Magic School Bus: What do you mean? Everything in the book is true.
Caller: Well, that doorbell can't be real.
Magic School Bus: Mmmm, maybe you're right. But it's a great idea!
Caller: You don't expect readers to believe that books can make all those sounds, do you?
Magic School Bus: You're right. That's make-believe.
Caller: And you can't really see sound, can you?
Magic School Bus: No. That's why the kids wore magic glasses. But everything else in the book is true.
Caller: What about the ghost? There aren't really any ghosts.
Magic School Bus: No, of course not.
Caller: And I don't think school buses are magical either.
Magic School Bus: No, they're not. But I bet you wish they were. Just use your imagination!
From the desk of Ms. Frizzle:
Take Chances! Make mistakes!
Sound begins when something moves or vibrates. Stretch several rubber bands of different thicknesses around a book. Which makes a higher sound, a thick band or a thin one? Try playing music on your rubber-band instrument.
Sound vibrations travel as waves. Drop a penny in a pan of water. The ripples you see are like sound waves.
Like the ripples, sound waves move away from their source. Find the sound waves in this book. Where are they going?
Ears catch sound. The brain makes it meaningful. Sounds help people communicate. Listen to the sounds around you. Make sounds by speaking or singing. Look for the ways that Ms. Frizzle and the kids make sounds in this book.
Some animals use sound to help them. Bats can't see well, but they use echoes to help them get around. Find the bats in the book.
You can direct sound. Speak into a tube or cup your hands around your mouth. The sound waves are squeezed into the tube so they don't spread out as quickly. Find some instruments in the book that direct sound. Having a teacher like Ms. Frizzle can make a kid nervous. Strange things always seem to happen when she's around. Take last week, when our class was supposed to do a live TV show for the Frizzle News Network. Ralphie was going to come up with an exciting story for us to cover. But here it was, Broadcast Day, and Ralphie was nowhere to be found.
Everyone was getting worried.
"We can't do it without him," Wanda said in a panic. She stared at the door, hoping Ralphie would race in. But he didn't. Instead, the telephone rang.
"Oh, yes. I see. He's sick. Poor Ralphie!" Ms. Frizzle said into the phone. "Of course he must stay in bed."
Carlos tried to get Ms. Frizzle's attention. "What about Broadcast Day?" he asked.
"Why, we're taking the school to him," Ms. Frizzle replied as she hung up the phone. 'To the bus!" she ordered us.
Here we go again.
As we boarded the bus we began to get worried. This seemed an awful lot like one of Ms. Frizzle's strange field trip ideas.
"Ms. Frizzle, are you sure this visit isn't a field trip?" Arnold asked finally.
Ms. Frizzle just grinned. "What do you think, Arnold?"
Ms. Frizzle closed the door and turned the key in the ignition. Boy, was Ralphie about to be surprised!
Ralphie was home in bed getting ready to take his medicine
"How can anything that smells like grape shoe polish help my body get well?" Ralphie asked his mother, who just happened to be a doctor.
"It will if you take one teaspoon three times a day," she replied. "Now I have to go see a patient. Grampa's downstairs if you need anything. I'll check in later."
Ralphie knew his mom wanted him to rest. But how could he rest, knowing he'd let everyone down on Broadcast Day? He jumped out of bed and went over to his computer. Maybe if he came up with a really great idea for the news show he could phone it in to the classroom. But even walking over to the computer made him tired.
Just then, Ralphie saw us all standing right there on his sidewalk. He looked very surprised!
We followed Ms. Frizzle straight up to Ralphie's bedroom. "We came to do Broadcast Day," Wanda told Ralphie. "What a great idea!" Ralphie exclaimed.
"Now and then I do have them." Ms. Frizzle laughed.
"Cough. Cough. Cough." Ralphie's cold was getting worse.
"You'd better take it easy, Ralphie," said Ms. Frizzle. "Your body is telling you to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n."
"But Ms. Frizzle! I can't. We have a show to do. What does my body know, anyway?" Ralphie asked.
That's when Ms. Frizzle got that look on her face -- the one that makes us nervous. "It knows a lot about the detection and rejection of infection, Ralphie. Inside you, at this moment, there is action! Adventure! Excitement!"
"Seat belts everyone!" Ms. Frizzle called back to us. "Ralphie, say 'Ahhhh.'"
Ralphie opened his mouth wide. We flew right down his throat. It was red and swollen. The bus must have tickled going down, because Ralphie coughed -- hard. The bus flew back out of his mouth.
We had to find another way to get inside Ralphie's body. "I've got it!" Ralphie cried out excitedly. "Look at this!"
He peeled off a bandage to show us a cut on his leg. We could enter through it. But the bus had to be even smaller to dive into a teeny tiny cut.
Hey! It's a short cut. Get it? Short cut?
We were inside Ralphie. But we were nowhere near his sore throat.
"Could we travel through his bloodstream to get to his sore throat?" asked Dorothy Ann.
"Absolutely!" answered Ms. Frizzle.
Ralphie watched us on his TV as we floated along in a thin, clear liquid.
"Is that my blood?" Ralphie asked. "I thought blood was red. That stuff is clear."
"The liquid part of the blood is clear," Ms. Frizzle explained. "So what are those red things?" Ralphie asked.
Dorothy Ann opened her notebook. "According to my research, they're called red blood cells. And the white ones are called white blood cells."
"Red blood cells carry oxygen to all parts of the body,"
Keesha added. "White blood cells search out and destroy germs. Platelets help the body heal scrapes and cuts.
Just then, Ralphie's mother came back to check on him. That's when she spotted us on the TV!
"What's that you're watching?" she asked. "It's remarkably realistic."
Ralphie had to think fast -- he couldn't let his mother know where the class really was! 'Those are just cheap TV special effects. Look, you can even see the wires!" he said.
The bus jerked to a stop. "We're here in the throat!" Ms. Frizzle called out. "It's time for some on-the-spot reporting.
Keesha and Carlos took one camera, Phoebe and Arnold took another. They quickly scrambled off the bus.
"Look at that, folks! Have we got us some action!" Carlos said in his best news reporter voice. "Those yellow-green balls are alive. They're destroying that wall!"
The yellow-green balls were bacteria cells. They were attacking Ralphie's throat. The bacteria were the bad guys that were making Ralphie sick.
Hmm. This show is very realistic!
"According to my research, bacteria are germs," Dorothy Ann explained. "Once inside our bodies, they can make us sick."
Back at the scene of the infection, Carlos noticed a lot of white blood cells. The white blood cells attacked the bacteria. The battle was on and for a moment it seemed as though the white blood cells would win.
Then, the bacteria began to divide! There were four, then eight, then more and more! There were too many bacteria for the white blood cells to battle on their own!
As he watched the action on the TV, Ralphie got scared "How could my body lose?"
"I don t think you should be watching this," Ralphie's mom said with concern. She got up to leave. "Your body needs to save its strength so it can use its energy to battle those bacteria."
The bacteria were everywhere! The reporters found themselves stuck in the middle of the battle! "Ralphie! Where's our backup support?" Dorothy Ann shouted.
"B-backup support?" Ralphie said weakly. "Where do I get that?"
"It's already on its way," said Ms. Frizzle calmly.
Just then, a river of purple fluid washed past the bus.
"Looks like grape shoe polish," Carlos said.
But it wasn't grape shoe polish. It was the medicine Ralphie had taken earlier.
The medicine worked side by side with the white blood cells to destroy the bacteria.
"It's destroying more bacteria!" Tim cheered. 'The medicine is giving the white blood cells a chance!
Just then a white blood cell sprayed antibodies all over the bus! It's the antibodies' job to mark bacteria. That's how e white blood cells know what to attack.
"Ralphie's white blood cells are doing such a good job!" 
Ms. Frizzle announced. "They now recognize us as enemies,
In my old school we were only afraid of the lunch meat!
"Enemies?" Arnold gulped. "But we know what white blood cells do to enemies!"
Ms. Frizzle smiled. "They'll try to destroy us. Ah, the wonder of the human body."
Now we were really scared! We cried for Ralphie to help us, but he was fast asleep.
"Don't worry class," Ms. Frizzle said. "In order to destroy us, Ralphie s white blood cells will have to catch us."
The bus made a sharp turn. Ms. Frizzle spoke into the broadcast microphone. "Ms. Frizzle here with an update on the Ralphie story," she said. 'To escape the white blood cells, we have left Ralphie's throat and are now heading up his nasal passages."
"His what?" Keesha whispered to Dorothy Ann.
Dorothy Ann flipped through her science book. "According to my research, that means his nose!"
Well, there were a lot of places we would have rather been, but at least we were away from those white blood cells!
It was getting late. We had to get back to school. But we were stuck in Ralphie's nose. There was only one thing to do. Ralphie was going to have to sneeze us out!
The bus flew out of Ralphie's nose and landed safely in a soft pile of socks.
"So, Ralphie," Keesha said, shoving her news microphone into Ralphie's face, "what do you have to say about today s adventure?"
"I'm sorry my body made such a mess of it," Ralphie croaked.
"Your body's built to keep out things like a bunch of germs -- or a bus of kids," Wanda explained to him.
"Okay," Ralphie agreed. "But what about when you almost got gobbled up by my white blood cells?"
The memory made Arnold shiver. "Only because your body thought we were bacteria," he said.
"That's the inside story, Ralphie," Ms. Frizzle said. Then she ordered everyone back on the bus. It was time to let Ralphie rest.
"We may have won the battle," she said. "But Ralphie's still fighting the war."
Dear Kids, Parents, and Teachers:
Your body is always working to keep you healthy. When you get sick, it works even harder to get you well. Your skin helps keep germs out of your body. The tiny hairs in your nose trap germs. The fluids in your nose and throat continually wash germs away. So do the tears in your eyes.
Sometimes germs do get into your body and grow despite your body's efforts. That is when you get sick. Your body fights germs in many ways. Even fever, swelling, and achiness may help your body contain the spread of germs and overcome them. Medicines work with your body's natural defenses to destroy germs.
When all the germs in your body that make you sick are destroyed, you get well again. When Ms. Frizzle is your teacher, anything can happen. Even on a Saturday, when there is no school!
Last Saturday, we were all sitting in our houses watching In Your Face. In Your Face is this really cool talk show that everyone in our class watches. Suddenly, the host of the show, Gerri Poveri, announced that a monster was living in Walker Lake.
A monster? We couldn't believe our ears! We turned off our sets and rushed to the lake to check it out.
When we got to the lake, we noticed that two things were missing. The first was Wanda. That was strange. She's usually the first person to jump into action. But now she was nowhere to be found.
The second thing was the monster. Was Gerri Poveri right? Was a monster really down there? We had to figure out a way to find out.
Then Tim came up with an idea. "I'll use my underwater video camera to catch the monster on film!" he suggested.
That's okay, I like banana splits better.
Tim put his monster-cam container into the water. But instead of sinking to the bottom, it floated on top of the water!
Then Phoebe came up with an idea. She thought the monster might be hungry. So she held a banana over the top of the lake.
"If I were a monster, it would take more than a banana to get me to the surface," Ralphie told Phoebe.
Phoebe had to admit that Ralphie had a point. "If the monster won't come up for a banana. I'll send the banana down to the monster." She threw the banana into the lake.
Splash! But just like Tim's video camera, the banana bobbed on top of the water, too.
We had to figure out some way to get to the bottom of this. "If we want to see that monster, we'll have to find a way to turn those floaters into sinkers," Keesha said.
Suddenly Wanda came running onto the dock.
"Where have you been?" we asked her. But Wanda was too excited to answer us.
"Did you see the monster yet?" she asked. She dumped the gear out of her backpack: swim fins, face mask, and snorkel.
What was Wanda up to?
"I'm going to dive for it," Wanda announced.
Phoebe didn't think Wanda's plan was such a good idea. "What would Ms. Frizzle say?" she asked.
Wanda shook her head. "It's the weekend, Phoebe. No school. No Ms. Frizzle."
Just then the water in the middle of the lake started bubbling like crazy. And the bubbles were heading straight toward the dock!
Was the monster finally coming up to the top?
It's coming toward us!
The next thing we knew, the monster was right in front of the dock. It rose out of the water, took off its face mask and mouthpiece, and...
It wasn't the monster. It was Ms. Frizzle!
"Good morning, class," the Friz said brightly. "Nothing like a dip in the deep."
What is she doing here?
"Are you looking for the monster, too?" Wanda asked.
"If you don't look, you'll never see. And what you don't see can be very hard to find," Ms. Frizzle replied.
We weren't sure exactly what that meant. But we knew that with Ms. Frizzle around, we were going to find out!
Just then we heard a loud whirring sound. The In Your Face helicopter was overhead.
"Stay out of the water," Gerri Poveri's voice boomed out. "For updates on the monster of Walker Lake, watch In Your Face."
Is it just me, or does this sound like a field trip?
I've got that sinking feeling.
Gerri Poveri's warning made Wanda angry. "Gerri Poveri doesn't own this lake," she said. "We can look for the monster if we want to!"
That's when Ms. Frizzle got that funny look in her eye. She whistled, and SPLASH! the Magic School Bus hit the water. But it wasn't a bus anymore. It was a bus-boat!
"All aboard," Ms. Frizzle called.
We scrambled onto the bus-boat and buckled our seat belts. "Ready to dive, Ms. Frizzle," Wanda said.
Ready but unable, Ms. Frizzle replied. "The sinkerlinker's rusted. And without it, we can't sink."
We floated on the water, trying to figure out how to get to the bottom of the lake.
Then Phoebe came up with another idea. She picked up a banana in one hand. In her other hand she held a rock. "My banana is lighter than this rock. If I add the rock to the banana, what will a banana-rock do?" she asked us.
We had no idea. She tied the two together and tossed them into the lake. The banana-rock sank!
"Good one, Phoebe," Keesha cheered. 'The extra weight of the rock is making the banana sink."
That's it!" Wanda said excitedly. "We need extra weight to sink!"
Don't let your energy sink!
All aboard for the last bus going down!
We knew we had to make the bus sink -- just like the banana-rock. We decided that sand would add the extra weight. So, we all got to work filling barrels with sand. Then we strapped the barrels to the bus-boat. Phew! It was hard work.
"This one should do it!" Wanda said as she and Arnold rolled a barrel onto the boat. We had added enough weight! The bus-boat started to sink. We jumped aboard and went below deck.
Finally, we sank to the bottom of the lake. We could see lots of fish. We could see lots of weeds. But what we didn't see was the jet-powered diving sled whizzing above us. Zoom! Suddenly, the barrels fell off the bus-boat.
"We're losing our extra weight!" Tim shouted.
"We're rising to the surface!" Phoebe added.
Ms. Frizzle smiled. "Right you are. Can you feel the water pushing us up, up, up? It's the water's push that's making us float!"
It was a little too exciting. All of a sudden, the boat shot upward like a cannon. We were out of control!
The bus-boat shot out of the lake and flew into the air. Then, plop! We landed back in the water.
Whew! We were safe.
"Water can be such pushy stuff," Ms. Frizzle said happily. "But we've still got to find that monster!" Wanda said.
Phoebe looked around. "Now how am I going to feed the monster?" she asked. She tossed a slice of bread into the water. The problem was, it floated. She scrunched up another piece and threw it into the water. That one sank.
But why?
"What's the difference between a bread slice and a bread ball?" Ms. Frizzle asked us.
"Well, the ball is a lot smaller than the slice," Keesha said.
Wanda got excited. "So you can take something that floats and crumple it up to make it sink?"
"Now you're thinking sinking," Ms. Frizzle said. "Class, prepare to crumple!"
Could I be excused from being crumpled?
Luckily, our bus-boat was equipped for crumplization. Liz pushed the crumple-zone buttons, and each corner of the bus-boat scrunched up. Soon we were starting to sink.
Carlos was confused. "If we weigh the same, how does being smaller make us sink?"
"Maybe it's because the less water we push out of the way, the less the water pushes us back up," Keesha explained.
Suddenly the bus-boat really crumpled. We were packed like sardines in a can!
Down, down, down we went. Just before we hit bottom, Wanda put on her face mask. Before we could ask what she was doing, Wanda disappeared through the floor hatch.
"Wan-daaa," we called.
The bus-boat started to rise in the water. Without Wanda's extra weight, we couldn't stay on the bottom!
We needed her back.
Wanda didn't hear us calling to her. She was too busy looking for the monster. Suddenly, something grabbed her leg! Wanda was stuck!
"Ahhhhh!" Wanda yelled.
We had to get back to the bottom of the lake so we could save her.
"We have to get smaller so we can sink," Ralphie said.
Ms. Frizzle shook her head. "I'm afraid we can't do that, Ralphie. The crumple control's jammed."
We were in big trouble.
"I know!" Carlos said. He put on his diving gear and dropped through the floor hatch.
A second later, we heard a big BLUB BLUB! Carlos had pulled the corks out of our pontoons. The pontoons were big plastic containers full of air that were attached to the bottom of the bus-boat.
Without the cork stoppers, water rushed into the pontoons.
"Whoa-oa-oa..." we all shouted. We were sinking again!
"I get it," Ralphie said. "More water, more weight!"
Meanwhile, Wanda was still struggling -- when suddenly she came face-to-face with the monster!
"All right, you asked for it," Wanda said. She pulled her arm back. WHAM! She gave the monster her best right-hand punch... and its nose fell off!
Wanda gasped. 'There is no monster! It's all just pretend!" Just then Gem Poveri drove up in her diving sled. "And I get to reveal it all on In Your Face!" she said excitedly.
Back on the bus-boat, the rest of us were confused -- what was going on? And where was Wanda?
Then Tim spotted her. 'There she is!" he shouted.
Sure enough, Wanda was swimming toward us. We all sighed in relief.
"What happened to the monster?" Carlos asked.
The monster's a fake," Wanda said in disgust. The real monster is Gerri Poveri. She was trying to get people to watch her show!"
It looks as if we're sunk for good!
"We have to get to the surface to stop her!" Wanda said. 'The truth must be told!"
Everyone looked worried. We didn't know how we'd be able to make it up to the top before Gerri went on television.
"The truth is the pontoons are completely filled with water. We're too heavy for our size!" Keesha said.
Just when we started to panic, Arnold came up with an idea. "If the water in the pontoons weighs us down," he said, "we could push that water out with something lighter."
Ms. Frizzle smiled. "And what is a lot lighter than water?" she asked us.
"Air!" we all said together.
The solution was simple. If we filled the pontoons with air again, the air would push the heavy water out and the bus-boat would be light enough to float.
A few minutes later, we put our plan into action. Carlos plugged up the holes on top of the pontoons, so the air wouldn't escape. Then we put air hoses through the holes on the bottom.
"Pumpers, start your pumps," Ms. Frizzle called.
On board, Arnold and Dorothy Ann started pumping. Air bubbles streamed from the air hoses. Soon air pockets appeared at the top of the pontoons. The air on top pushed the water out. Whoosh! The bus-boat started to rise. Our plan was working!
We all swam back into the bus-boat.
"Now that were lighter, the water pushes up on us harder than our weight pushes down," Ms. Frizzle told us.
But we weren't rising for very long. Keesha looked through the glass bottom of the bus-boat. 'The corks are gone and the air is escaping!" she exclaimed. Someone had pulled out the corks. And we had a good idea who it was -- Gerri Poveri.
Just then, we saw Gerri Poveri's fake monster. It was rising toward the surface! Gerri was going to lie to her audience and say that she had found the monster. But she was the one who had put it there in the first place!
We had to float the boat, and fast.
"How about getting bigger?" Phoebe suggested. "Remember my bread slice? When it was big, it floated!"
"So if we uncrumple the bus, we'll get bigger and the water will push back more -- so we'll float!" Dorothy Ann said.
"Let's do it!" shouted Keesha. We all dived into the water.
We got to work. Bit by bit, we pushed and pulled the bus-boat back to its normal size. And we started to rise!
Just as we started to pick up speed, Wanda grabbed hold of Tim. "Come on, Tim," she said. "I have an idea. And bring the monster-cam." And off they swam.
A second later, the bus-boat and the monster burst out of the lake -- right underneath Gerri Poveri!
"My story!" Gerri wailed as she fell into the lake with a splash.
Wanda popped out of the water. "Our story, you mean," she said with a grin.
She stuck a pin into the monster. FSSSSTTT! It shot upward, doing a wriggly dance as the air whooshed out. It landed on the lake with a splat. And Tim got the whole thing on videotape!
It had been a pretty exciting Saturday. But it wasn't over yet. We all got to watch Gerri apologize to her audience and we got to be on In Your Face!
How did you get the monster to the surface?" Gerri wanted to know.
The monster was big and light enough to float," Wanda said.
Phoebe discovered that a piece of bread floats, but the same piece of bread sinks if it is scrunched into a ball.
Can you think of a way to make a lump of clay float? Try this experiment.
We're always doing something interesting -- and fun in Ms. Frizzle's class. The other day we were learning about water.
Wanda and Arnold made a model waterworks. "Now, just add water!" said Wanda.
Wanda took Arnold into the girls' bathroom to get water. "Hurry, Wanda," said Arnold. "This is embarrassing! What if somebody catches me in here?"
Wanda laughed. "Who's going to catch us -- Tiffany?" Arnold turned red.
At last the bucket was full.
"Okay, Arnold, you can take out the plug and turn off the water now," said Wanda. She picked up the heavy bucket and headed back to the classroom.
Arnold started to turn off the water. Just then he heard someone come in. It was Tiffany!
Tiffany ran. Arnold chased after her. He had to explain! But he'd forgotten to turn off the faucet. The water kept dripping...
Arnold didn't get very far. Tim came into the hallway.
"It's time for your report," he said.
Arnold shook his head. So far, he was having a terrible day! In the classroom, Wanda was trying out their waterworks model. "We pour in the water," said Wanda. "It runs through the cleaning tanks, and out of the pipe at the other end. Perfect!"
When Carlos opened the mop closet, a big wave of water came out. And out of the water stepped our teacher, Ms.
Frizzle. Did I mention that Ms. Frizzle is... well... a little different?
"Good morning, class!" she said. "Are you ready to learn about water?"
Good morning, Ms. Frizzle.
"I'd rather hit the Surf Ride at Waterland," said Wanda. Ms Frizzle got that funny look she sometimes gets. "Of course!" she exclaimed. "To learn about water, we really need to get into it. Time for a field trip!"
The Friz led us outside to the old school bus. Dorothy Ann stopped to check her rain gauge. "Wow, it really rained a lot!" she said.
"Nearly two inches this morning," said Tim.
Dorothy Ann wrote the information in her notebook. "That's a school record!"
"All aboard!" called the Friz from the bus.
"Here we go!" said the Friz.
All of a sudden, there was a loud gurgling noise.
Arnold's eyes widened. "I have a feeling this isn't the way to Waterland," he said.
"Who said we were going to Waterland?" said Ms. Frizzle.
"Why visit the water when we could actually be water? 
Suddenly the whole bus rose into the air. We felt cool and heavy. We were turning into water! With a big plop, we dripped right into Dorothy Ann's rain gauge.
"Welcome to the real Waterland," said Ms. Frizzle.
Wanda floated happily inside the rain gauge. "This is great!" she exclaimed. "It's nice and warm in here with the sun shining down. Can we stay all day?"
"I don't think so," said Ralphie, who was starting to float up into the air. "I think we're going uuuuuup!"
Ms. Frizzle nodded as she floated up, too. "When water is warmed by the sun, it evaporates or turns into a gas called water vapor," she explained.
Soon we all had turned into water vapor and were rising up into the sky.
"This is too weird," said Arnold. "I wish I could be water again."
"You are water, Arnold," said Dorothy Ann. "But right now you are water vapor, which is a gas, not a liquid."
It was getting cold way up there in the air.
"Brrr!" said Wanda. "Hey, look! I'm turning back into droplets!"
Ms. Frizzle smiled. This field trip was going according to her plan. "Arnold is getting his wish. We're changing back into a liquid. We're condensing!" said the Friz.
We never condensed at my old school.
It felt tickly to be a cloud, especially when the wind started to blow. It blew us across some water... and over a forest. Then we formed one big cloud.
"Where are we?" asked Arnold.
"On our way down. 1 believe." answered Ms. Frizzle. And. sure enough, we were starting to drip. Our cloud was raining!
We dropped onto leaves and slid down to the ground. Then we found each other again and started downhill. "Go with the flow, class!" said Ms. Frizzle happily.
We made it all the way to the ocean.
"Good!" said Arnold. "Now we can rest."
"Sony. Arnold," said Ms. Frizzle. "This is no time to rest. Don't you feel the sun warming us? What happens next?" "We... evaporate?" said Arnold uncertainly as we all rose into the air.
"Correct!" called the Friz. "And when we reach cold air?" she asked.
"We condense!" said Phoebe happily. "I love this part. We turn into clouds and the wind blows us somewhere." "AGAIN?!" moaned Arnold.
"This is not the last time, either, Arnold," said Ms. Frizzle. "You mean, water keeps evaporating, condensing, and raining forever?" gasped Arnold.
"Bingo!" said the Friz. "That's why it's called the water cycle. It happens over and over again. In fact, I think we're about to rain again right now!"
We rained right onto our own school.
"Whew! Back at last!" said Arnold. Then he looked through the window where he and Wanda had landed. "Oh, my gosh! It's the girls' bathroom. And I left the plug in and the water dripping!"
"Liz has it under control," said Wanda. "Or is her tail stuck in the faucet?"
Liz nodded frantically as she tried to pull her tail out.
What could we do? We all followed Arnold. It wasn't far to the waterworks, and fortunately the wind was blowing in the right direction.
"Here we are!" announced Arnold. "We're right over the reservoir."
Wanda was excited. "Hey, this is where the water is stored and where the waterworks begin."
"Squeeze together, class!" said Ms. Frizzle. "Prepare to rain!
We felt ourselves being sucked into a big pipe with a lot of dirt and gunk from the reservoir.
"I can't believe we drink this stuff!" said Carlos.
It gets... I mean, we get cleaned first," said Arnold. "Here come the strainers!"
We passed through what looked like a wire fence, leaving a lot of the gunk behind. Then we floated through some white, puffy stuff.
"It's alum." explained Arnold. "It sponges up dirt. Now on to the settling basin!"
The alum and dirt fell to the bottom of the settling basin. A lot cleaner, we floated on.
Last stop, filtration tank!" announced Arnold as we flowed through some scratchy gravel. "Now we just have to find the right pipe to take us back to school.
"This way!" Arnold said, and we all followed. The pipes were big at first, but they got smaller and smaller as we went along underneath the town.
"How much farther to the school and the girls' bathroom?" asked Wanda.
"This must be it," Arnold said.
"Hey, it's Liz's tail." said Wanda. She pushed it. She pushed harder. We all pushed. It didn't budge. Liz's tail really was stuck.
"Well. I hate to do this, but it has to be done." said Wanda. And she bit Liz's tail -- hard!
Now that the faucet was open, we all flooded into the bathroom sink... over the edge... and onto the floor.
"Oh, no!" groaned Arnold. "Here comes Tiffany again! Don't let her see me!"
But all Tiffany saw was a flood in progress. "Holy cow!" she yelled, and she ran to turn off the faucet. By that time, we had all flowed out the open door, down the hall, and out into the school yard.
"Tiffany!" called Arnold, running to help her up from a puddle of water. "Are you all right?"
"I think so," she answered. "Thank you, Arnold"
Arnold's face turned pink, but he was grinning from ear to ear.
You've just taken a trip through the water cycle. It could have gone on much longer forever, in fact, because the water cycle never ends. The Earth constantly moves water around on its surface: Water travels downhill in rivers to oceans, the lowest places on the Earth's surface; heat from the sun changes surface water to a gas; when the vapor cools, it condenses and falls to Earth again as rain or snow; and, back on Earth, it starts to collect again, traveling downhill in rivulets and rivers to the ocean. The cycle is complete.
Along the way, plants, animals, and humans take water from the cycle, use it, and return it, one way or another, to the cycle. Humans take water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and manufacturing, and they return it to the water cycle.
Although there is lots of water in the world, it is not always where we want it when we want it. Only a tiny part of the Earth's water is drinkable.