The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks

Cole combines science and whimsy to create an entertaining story, filled with facts about drinking water. Ms. Frizzle doesn't take her class on mundane field trips. To study the waterworks, she loads them into a magic schoolbus that carries them to a cloud. There, each student is miniaturized within a raindrop and follows the water through purification and back to school, where they emerge through the tap in the girls' bathroom and return to normal size. Degen's full-color illustrations are appealing; balloons carry the running commentary among students, and their notebook reports relay much information painlessly. (6-9)