Author and illustrator Bruce Degen, best known for his detailed, humorous artwork depicting the fun and informative field trips of Ms. Frizzle’s class in the Magic School Bus picture book series, died on November 7 of pancreatic cancer at his home in Newtown, Ct. He was 79.
Degen was born June 14, 1945, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and grew up in the borough. “I always, always, always loved to draw,” he told the Newtown Bee in 2022. That passion would serve as a buffer as he struggled to exemplify good behavior in school. He often recalled his boredom with elementary schoolwork, and how one exceptionally supportive teacher, Miss Rich, allowed him to stand in the back of his sixth-grade classroom and paint when he needed help focusing on lessons.
From a young age, Degen also loved books. “As a child I would love to go to the library,” he told Something About the Author. “If it was a nice day I wouldn’t wait until I got home to read my books. I had to stop in the little park and begin my books under a tree,” he said.
By eighth grade, Degen’s art skills and grades were strong enough to help him gain admission to the High School of Music & Art (now LaGuardia High School). It was there that another caring teacher encouraged him to pursue higher art education at the Cooper Union in Manhattan and he earned a B.F.A. from the school in 1966. While at Cooper Union, Degen met fellow student Christine Bostard. The couple married in 1968, eventually raising two sons, also artists.
Following his graduation from Cooper Union, Degen accepted a full-time position as an art teacher in the New York City public schools, and also worked freelance gigs in advertising design and painting. Beginning in 1971 he additionally served as a director for an artists’ lithography studio in Israel.
Degen continued with his formal art study, too, and received an M.F.A. in printmaking and painting from New York’s Pratt Institute in 1975. Though he initially thought he would earn his living as a fine artist, Degen realized that the gallery world was not the best fit. “I was in art school doing very serious art, and I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said in a 2020 interview with Science.org. “I said to myself, ‘Why did I do art in the first place?’ It was fun. And I realized that, in my heart of hearts, I wanted to do children’s books because they could be funny and beautiful.”
With this new goal in mind, Degen credited a night course taught by author and illustrator Barbara Bottner with shifting his illustration journey into high gear. “I walked out of that course with a portfolio full of drawings and book ideas,” Degen told the Newtown Bee. “I went around to visit the publishers in Manhattan with my portfolio and I started doing children’s books.”
The first book that Degen both wrote and illustrated, Aunt Possum and the Pumpkin Man, was published by Harper and Row in 1977. That same year, he quickly lined up additional illustration projects for books by other authors, beginning with Forecast by Malcolm Hall (Coward).
The work came steadily for several years and in 1980, Degen illustrated Commander Toad in Space (Coward), the first of a seven-book series of early chapter books by Jane Yolen. In 1983, Degen wrote and illustrated one of his most beloved picture books, Jamberry (Harper & Row), featuring the berry-picking adventure of a jam-loving boy and a lovable bear with a knack for spouting nonsensical berry-flavored rhymes. A bear also takes center stage in Degen’s illustrations for Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? (Macmillan, 1986) and a raft of subsequent titles in Nancy White Carlstrom’s Jesse Bear series.
But the series that blasted Degen into new realms of popularity—The Magic School Bus—written by Joanna Cole was first pitched to him by the late Scholastic editor Craig Walker in 1984. As the oft-told story goes, Degen and Cole, already a noted nonfiction author, and a writer of humorous books, met at the Scholastic offices and hit it off immediately. They developed a brainstorming rhythm as Degen contributed his own ideas and flair to Cole’s blend of well-researched, multilayered text and flashes of zaniness. The series officially pulled out of the depot with The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks, published in 1986. Not only did Cole and Degen become close collaborators over the 14 books they created together about the amazing field trips taken by Ms. Frizzle, her class, and their shape-shifting bus, but they also became dear friends, eventually living in the same town.
The books went on to be adapted as a popular animated series, first on PBS, then Netflix; and additionally spawned spin-off books, and licensed products. There are more than 95 million copies of the Magic School Bus books in print worldwide.
With more than 50 books to his credit, Degen believed he had taken the most fulfilling career path with his art. “You can do a painting, and it might end up being on somebody’s wall, but if you do a book, it goes out into the world,” he told Reading Rockets in 2008. “It’s in libraries. It’s in homes. There’s nothing like that. There’s nothing like the fact that you’ve actually become part of somebody’s family life.”
Phoebe Yeh, VP and editor at large for Crown Books for Young Readers, was at Scholastic when the Magic School Bus was born and worked with Degen on the series and beyond. “It is so very hard to do justice to the genius of Bruce Degen,” she said. “I was the lowly editorial assistant who became part of the Magic School Bus series from the very beginning. I heard Craig Walker describe his idea about the science teacher who took her class on very strange field trips; how he searched for the right author, Joanna Cole. And then art director Diana Hrisinko’s recommendation of Bruce Degen, who would not be daunted by the complexity of the book format. He would be able to make visual sense of the multiple story threads: narrative, reports, speech bubbles and create a readable aesthetic whole.
Clearly, he was a genius at composition. He could draw anything: people, animals, obviously science content, and we would learn that he had a fashion sensibility, too. Everyone had suggestions about Ms. Frizzle’s dresses but we were all inspired by the first wardrobe he created for her. Bruce had to do extensive research alongside Joanna. And it was apparent that he was every bit as funny as Joanna. I learned everything about exemplary bookmaking from Bruce, his creative flair, his fanciful and childlike sensibility, his meticulous attention to detail.
Bruce Degen was one-of-a-kind. We have lost a true pioneer of children’s bookmaking. Thankfully we have his books and characters: Jamberry, Jesse Bear, Ms. Frizzle and Arnold, who will live on, forever.”
And David Levithan, SVP/editorial of Scholastic Press, offered this tribute: “The joy that you find on every page of The Magic School Bus comes directly from the immense joy Bruce expressed in creating the art, inspired by Joanna’s playfully informative words. And what a joy it was to work with him. He took such mischievous delight in the characters, and was up for any challenge the science threw his way, whether it involved wandering the vastness of space or focusing on the evolution of an amoeba. He was a craftsman in the best sense, always looking for new ways to expand the visual language of the series while staying true to its heart. I inherited the series from my boss, Craig Walker, who had a loving bond with Bruce and Joanna that went far beyond the books. They built a bus together and then they made sure to truly enjoy the ride.
I will miss Bruce’s stories about the old days and how he’d unfurl them over a long lunch. I will miss the twinkle in his eye as he road-tested a new joke for Arnold or planned a new outfit for Ms. Frizzle. But hopefully I won’t miss the joy of it all, because that’s what I plan to hold on to—and what generation after generation of young readers will get to experience whenever they hop on board.”
