Ms Frizzle’s Latest Adventure: Learn From Cole & Degen

With the start of another school year what could be better than a wacky walk through time with the world’s most notorious teacher for strange happenings? Polish up that armor for a Middle Ages escape in Ms Frizzle’s Adventures: Medieval Castle, the latest compilation by author Joanna Cole and illustrator Bruce Degen.

To celebrate their latest release, which came out in August, Mrs Cole and Mr Degen will return to C.H. Booth Library in Newtown on Sunday, October 5. They will present a free program at 1 pm in the library’s community room.

Ms Frizzle’s Adventures: Medieval Castle (Scholastic Press, $15.95 hardcover, ages 6-10) starts as an innocent stop into a castle specialty shop for Ms Frizzle and one of her students, Arnold. The two soon find themselves traveling back in time to the Middle Ages – along with the shopkeeper and his costume designer. A romp about jolly old England in the 12th Century is an experience every cellphone user and Xbox devotee should probably avoid, except when the Friz is involved.

Upon their arrival on the grounds of a drafty medieval castle, Ms Frizzle and Arnold start pitching in and learning first hand what life was like in a castle. From peasants to the Lord and Lady, they leave no stone unturned and no task undone as they discover how this walled community survived the times.

And then of course Ms Frizzle and Arnold find themselves on an expanding adventure when they find themselves under siege by a neighboring army. (Fortunately it turns out The Friz happens to be a wiz a swordplay.)

Much to his dismay it is up to Arnold to sneak out and get a message to the traveling Lord of the castle to return and help. Can Ms Frizzle and the rest of the garrison defend the castle until Arnold returns? Will Arnold be able to find his way through England without a map… or a cell phone?

Ms Frizzle’s Adventures: Medieval Castle is a field trip neatly wrapped up in colorful pages filled with information, humor and bright illustrations. Whether readers are traveling back to the past or back to the future, this is one adventure that will leave children wanted a moat of their own. The story is a brilliant look inside how people survived long before microwaves and fast food.

Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen, the author and illustrator of The Magic School Bus books, have collaborated for more than 15 years. Writer Joanna Cole has received The Washington Post Children’s Book Guild Award for Non-Fiction and The David McCord Children’s Literature Citation for her significant contribution to excellence in the field of children’s books.

Artist Bruce Degen has illustrated more than 30 books for children, including Jamberry and Daddy is a Doodlebug, which he also wrote, and the Jesse Bear series.

Ms Frizzle has taken her classes – and Magic School Bus readers – inside the earth, inside the human body, into the solar system and inside a beehive to the ocean floor, into a hurricane’s center, back to the time of the dinosaurs and into a waterworks station.

For Ms Frizzle’s Adventures, the two decided to tackle a new challenge: history. Starting with Ancient Egypt and now moving onto Medieval Castle, they have infused their new series with the same kid-like sense of fun and curiosity that made The Magic School Bus such a success.