Fourth Grade

• Astronomy & Space
• Engineering & Technology
• Comics / Graphic Narrative

Why it works: Jack and Annie's questions about planets, stars, the universe, Moon travel, the Sun, and life in space organize this nonfiction comic. Familiar characters and sequential art turn astronomy answers into an out-of-this-world investigation rather than a conventional reference chapter.

• Life Science
• Human Body & Health
• Story / Adventure

Why it works: A class picnic expands into a Magic School Bus trip through the microscopic world of microbes. The class's impossible change of scale lets readers encounter germs, microorganisms, and health questions as discoveries inside an adventure.

• Physics & Energy
• Engineering & Technology
• Story / Adventure

Why it works: The class rides alongside electric current as it moves through town and powers familiar devices. That impossible field trip turns a bulb, toaster, and motor into stops on an adventure about how electrical energy travels and changes form.

• Life Science
• Environment & Ecology
• Story / Adventure

Why it works: The class's escape from a great white shark turns shark biology and aquarium observations into the stakes of a Magic School Bus adventure. Readers have to distinguish what the animal is, how it behaves, and what the story exaggerates in order to follow the peril.

• Physics & Energy
• Story / Adventure

Why it works: Amazing Magnetism sends the Friz's class into another exaggerated Magic School Bus adventure built around magnetic surprises. Predictions about attraction, repulsion, and magnetic materials are needed to understand what the class tries and why the next result changes its plan.