THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS INSIDE THE HUMAN BODY

Ms. Frizzle and her students climb aboard the bus for their third anything-can-happen field trip--this time to discover how the body gets energy from food.

Poor Arnold, dawdling over his cheesie weesies, isn't aboard when Friz pushes the strange button near the ignition. The bus shrinks to cheesie-weesie size, and Arnold swallows it. It's pushed through his esophagus, swirled in the stomach ("roll up your windows, children"), and absorbed through the small intestine into the blood stream. There Arnold's classmates, now wearing surgical gowns, float out of the bus and hitch rides on his red blood cells. Before this highly graphic tour is over, the class has been pumped through the heart and lungs, walked on the brain, climbed down the spinal cord, and exited through Arnold's nose in a huge sneeze. Fans will be happy that Frizzle has not retired her scientifically decorated wardrobe and that her class still issues wisecracks and helpful mini-reports. Others may note that some organs (kidneys, liver, pancreas) get short shrift and that the pages on the heart and lung functions are not quite up to the usual clear, dramatic presentation. 

But all, even those who freeze at the mere mention of "science," will be eager to learn about the human body as it is presented here.