English 230 - Illustrated Books

    Noel Perrin has published an appreciation of this volume in the series, noting the "bright, clear, imaginative, funny" illustrations (13) and the careful text..  However, he does identify some potential problems with the book: its membership in a formulaic series, cartoon-ish dialogue, and extremely brief "sound-bite" style of composition (13).  On the other hand, this mix of ways to communicate information "work[s] together to produce a complex and entertaining account of the solar system, a sort of verbal orrery.  Enough bites of the right kind make a meal." (14)  He notes with approval the disclaimers at the end that distinguish between what is scientifically accurate and the necessary magic of the bus.
    One reviewer notes in particular "the multiplicity of text formats" which "invites casual browsers but is never overwhelming or cluttered" (Children's Literature Review 40:29)

    The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System was first published in 1990.  All informational or non-fiction books face the possibility of becoming outdated as new information about their subjects emerges, and this is particularly true of books dealing with science.  The Magic School Bus presents the solar system as it was understood at the time it was published, and in fact more or less that same model of the solar system had prevailed for over half a century, since the discovery of Pluto in 1930.  While some details changed (e.g., the number of moons of the various planets), and our knowledge of the solar system was greatly enhanced by more powerful telescopes, new analytic technology, and most particularly the exploration of space by unmanned spacecraft, the essential composition of the system remained the same: four rocky inner planets circling the sun, an asteroid belt beyond the fourth planet, then four gas giants at great distances from the sun, and finally a very small, rocky planet (Pluto) at the fringes of the system.   (This is still a greatly oversimplified account, leaving out comets and the various Kuiper objects identified beyond Pluto's orbit.)

    In 2006, however, astronomers removed Pluto from the list of planets.  The decision resulted from a number of discoveries over several years: first, that Pluto was even smaller than had previously been believed; second, that an object in the Kuiper belt, even more distant than Pluto, was slightly larger; and third, the recognition that a number of medium-sized objects existed.  Scientists were faced with two options: expand the list of recognized planets to at least 10 by adding UB313 (Xena), the Kuiper object that was larger than Pluto, or shrink the list to eight.  In the reclassification, Pluto was designated a "dwarf planet," along with Xena, Ceres (the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter), and a number of other Kuiper objects.  This new information means that The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System no longer reflects current understanding of the solar system.
 

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Page last updated July 18, 2007