The Magic School Bus Builds the Statue of Liberty is the fifteenth of twenty-four of The Magic School Bus Scholastic Reader books.
Plot[]
The kids are studying the origins of the Statue of Liberty, and they are planning on building a model of the statue. Ms. Frizzle was planning to take the kids on a trip to Liberty Island, but instead, the Bus travels back in time and transforms into a carriage. They arrive in New York, and later, they sail to France. In France, the class meets the architect of the Statue, Jean-Auguste Bartholdi, who takes the class on a tour of his factory. The class helps build the statue. Later, the kids are sent into a packing crate with the face of the statue and are shipped to America, where they shrink and travel around Bartholdi's hat. They witness the ceremony of the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, and travel back to the present day, when they build their model.
Trivia[]
- This, along with At the First Thanksgiving are of the few stories in the franchise not to directly involve science, but History & Math. Math would be the subject of the episode, Ralphie and the Flying Tennellis over a decade later.
- At the end of the book, Ms. Frizzle's dress has George Washington cross the Delaware on it, this would have made the next book either on the Life of George Washington or The American Revolution.
- However, the next book in the series turned back to science learning rather than history.