My kiddo is a science nut, so it’s no wonder that she adores The Magic School Bus series. It doesn’t matter if it’s the books, the TV show, or anything else; if it’s Magic School Bus oriented, she is guaranteed to love it. So we’ve been picking up some Magic School Bus books each time we hit the library lately.

One of our recent books, The Magic School Bus Flies From the Nest, was a big hit. Wood Sprite (as I call my five-year-old) is a huge fan of birds and eggs, too. So this book was doubly fun for her. It’s a Level 2 Scholastic Reader Book, which means that it’s designed for early readers. This means that the story itself isn’t all that compelling when read aloud, but it’s a good teaching tool for early readers. Like every Magic School Bus book, it begins with an introduction to all of the Magic School Bus characters (including Ms. Frizzle and Liz, the lizard, and my daughter’s favorite). The book starts with simple language and uses bubble dialogue boxes to convey much of the content, including all of the dialogue. While this is surely easier for children to read than traditional dialogue, it can make reading aloud a little more difficult—especially if you don’t know the characters by name.

Like other books in the Magic School Bus series, much of the science takes place in mini-reports written by the children of the class. Since it’s an early reader book, however, the reports are even shorter than usual. The first report, for example, is only three short sentences long, and describes the process of migration. Though it’s very simply written, the report describes basic migration habits of robins for children to read, helping them learn vocabulary and a science lesson as they read.

And as with every other Magic School Bus book, the class goes on a field trip. This book’s field trip is, of course, in a bird’s nest. Small lessons about birds, from the things that birds use to build their nests to how eggs hatch to the diet of robins, can be found throughout the texts in these mini reports. The bus itself is even transformed into a bird’s nest at one point. Bird interaction is also displayed through a conflict with a bluebird.

Altogether the book is an enjoyable, educational read for young fledgling readers, though perhaps not as appropriate for toddlers who rely on beautiful picture books with more descriptive language.