By Judith Bauer Stamper
Ms. Frizzle's class takes the magic bus to Antarctica to crack a penguin mystery, in a wordier chapter-book adventure.
Ms. Frizzle loads the class onto the magic school bus and heads for Antarctica, where the bus turns into all sorts of things and the children go looking for answers about penguins: which kind is which, how they survive the cold, and how they raise their chicks on the ice. Along the way there's a real Antarctic adventure, with freezing water, a leopard seal, and a very long way from home. It's the science-adventure pick, a bit longer and wordier than the others here, closer to a full chapter book than the picture-book version.
This is the science-adventure step sideways from time travel, and it's the wordiest book on the shelf, which makes it a good stretch for a Magic Tree House fan ready for a little more text. The famous school bus works a lot like the magic tree house, an ordinary thing that takes the class somewhere impossible, so the setup feels familiar. There's real science folded into a real adventure, and because it's a chapter book rather than the picture version, it asks a bit more of your child while still keeping the pictures and the pace.