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Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen take another ride on the Magic School Bus, to the center of the earth and back.
Ever wish you’d been allowed to use shovels, picks and jackhammers on your school trips? Or that the school bus would turn into a steam shovel so you could dig all the way to the center of the earth? When Ms Frizzle wants her class to find out about classifying rocks you know they won’t be picking pebbles off the sidewalk! Digging for FactsWhen she decides it’s time to study the earth, Ms Frizzle asks each member of the class to bring in an example of a rock, but only one person actually manages to find one. So the obvious answer is a field trip, but with the help of the Magic School Bus the class doesn’t stay in the field for long. Soon the kids are busy digging through the soil, or, as Ms Frizzle reminds them, the top layer of the earth’s crust. With the help of their trusty jackhammers the class finally hit rocks on the next layer, and set to work identifying them. Shale, sandstone, limestone and even the odd fossil are added to the class rock collection. These are sedimentary rocks, formed when dust and sand blew into oceans and lakes millions of years ago, settling at the bottom in layers of sediment. Next Stop - MetamorphicOn down they go towards the center, through a cave with stalagmites and stalactites, formed by dripping water containing tiny particles of limestone. The temperature is rising and the rocks they find are getting harder – the heat and pressure changes one kind of rock to another. Limestone has become marble, shale has turned to slate; the sedimentary rocks are now metamorphic. Just before the bus reaches the mantle, or second layer, of the earth, the heat is so intense the rock has literally melted. When molten rock, such as granite, pushes up through the earth’s crust, cools and hardens, it is known as igneous rock. Are There Such Things as New Rocks?So the Magic School Bus, with its handy drill, keeps going – through the mantle, to the outer core, made of molten metal, and finally the inner core, which is solid metal with a temperature of 3000-5000 degrees. Back up through the crust it comes, emerging on a volcanic island, with more samples of igneous rock for the class to find. Unfortunately for Ms Frizzle and the kids, the volcano is active, and before long an eruption of molten lava sends the bus shooting off the island, up into the sky and finally back at school. And when that lava cools and hardens, it forms new rock, where eventually soil will form and plants can grow. Another winning effort from Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen, who once again take a potentially dry subject and make it fun, without losing the “science bits” along the way. From buildings made of sandstone, limestone or granite, to roof tiles and chalkboards made of slate, Magic School Bus Inside the Earth makes it easy to identify what things we see every day are actually made of. As in Magic School Bus and the Electric Field Trip, there is a section at the end that separates fact from fiction, in case some readers are convinced you can travel to the center of the earth or your average school bus can change into a drill or withstand a full lava flow. Visit the website – www.scholastic.com/magicschoolbus - for details of other books in the series as well as episodes of the TV show.
The copyright of the article Magic School Bus - Earth in Children's Non-Fiction is owned by Arlene Kelly. Permission to republish Magic School Bus - Earth in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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