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The Magic School Bus series is both a book and TV show series. It focuses on teaching students different science concepts through fun, interactive educational comedy. I have not read a Magic School Bus book in years until recently and now I remember why I enjoyed them so much growing up. This book focuses on Mrs. Frizzle’s class taking a trip to the coral reef. The students get to experience the reef in person and learn about the surrounding ecosystem. This book, and book series in general, is crucial for all early age teachers to have in the classroom. There is so much color and detail in all the pictures and extra textual features; students will want to read more! I love the fact there is not an overwhelming amount of text on each page, which means students, can easily follow along. The book focuses on how the coral reef needs to maintain its relationship with the ecosystem it is in otherwise it will die. That science lesson in also tied in to the moral of the story about Wanda and her difficulty with working with others. The book does a wonderful job of showing students that partners and teamwork helps – regardless if it is human relationship or a scientific relationship. The author did a wonderful job of tying scientific information with personal relationships – it helps the students relate to the book better. I highly recommend this knowledgeable book for all teachers because it will make your students excited to learn about science! ( )

The magic school book series is a fun informational book that teaches students different science concepts. I liked this book because of the comedy that the author puts into the story and the format of the book. The author gives the characters a lot of personality so the readers can relate. " Now there's a question worth diving into wanda". This quote shows that Mrs. Frizzle has a good personality. I liked how the author set up the book because she has the characters speak in the main speech paragraphs and they also have their own speech bubbles. The illustrations are very detailed. The made message of this book is team work makes the dream work. ( )

I really enjoyed this book in the Magic School Bus series. This book was an informational story on coral reefs. The story was very consistent with the style of the previous books. The students all go on a field trip to the coral reefs to experience what coral reefs are like and learn about them in person. I have always loved the concept of the Magic School Bus books and really find that children respond well to books like this and the Magic Tree House for learning about science or history that they may find boring from school or textbooks. This is a great reading tool to use in the classroom to get some of those kids interested in learning and reading. One thing that I like about this book in particular was that it did not include too many of the side paragraphs, dialogue bubbles and notes that these books usually had. I found that more appealing because it had better organization and looked less “busy” on the page than some of the other books in the series. The story was more condensed to the content and flowed better when reading the whole book through. Another specific aspect of this particular story that I enjoyed was the problem between Wanda, one of the students, and having partners for the project they must do. She has a hard time working together with other kids, which the readers can relate to if they are this type of student. However, by the end of the book, and after learning about how the coral reef can’t function without the relationships it has with the ecosystem, she realizes the importance of working together with her classmates. I thought that this was really endearing and a great take away from the book apart from all the information you learn. This book may be more appropriate for older children because there is a lot of scientific vocabulary: “According to my research, if the water around the coral reef becomes polluted, the polyps get rid of their algae partners.” Some younger readers might be able to understand parts of the story because there is help definitions and indexes to help readers identify some harder terms specific to this topic. ( )