Bruce Degen, the illustrator of “The Magic School Bus” series of children’s books, died on Thursday at his home in Newtown, Conn. He was 79.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, his family said.
The main character of the books, a science teacher named Ms. Frizzle, shows her elementary school students that adventure awaits in understanding the biology, chemistry and physics of everyday life.
Ms. Frizzle drives her yellow school bus up into the clouds, so that her students can hop inside raindrops and travel through their local water treatment system. On other occasions, she drives through the small intestine and across the surface of the sun.
Joanna Cole, a children’s book author, was responsible for making those lessons educational, writing the text of Ms. Frizzle’s lessons and inventing plots that put her students inside a hurricane or a classmate’s nose. Ms. Cole gave Ms. Frizzle catchphrases like “take chances, make mistakes and get messy!”
Mr. Degen (pronounced like the Major Deegan Expressway) made the visual world of the books by using the clear lines of pen and ink and also the childlike softness of watercolor. He rendered Ms. Frizzle’s hair red and wildly frizzy — but contained it all in a mostly tidy bun.
He invented a wardrobe that inspired many a Ms. Frizzle Halloween costume, decorating her dresses with prehistoric flying reptiles or shooting stars and, most famously, endowing her pumps with an extraordinary array of buckles: duck heads, dollar bills and tongues.
The illustrations managed to seem at once fantastical, sweet and straightforward, as if they were drawn with a child’s sensibility and a professional’s skill.
Among Ms. Frizzle’s students, the most memorable one was Arnold, who calls Ms. Frizzle “the strangest teacher in the school.” Mr. Degen depicted him as a chubby, bespectacled boy in a yellow-striped shirt.
More than 95 million copies of 14 “Magic School Bus” books are in print in 13 countries, Seale Ballenger, a representative of the publisher, Scholastic Corporation, said in an email. The series inspired a cartoon PBS series (1994-97) with Lily Tomlin providing the voice of Ms. Frizzle.
When children in science classes nationwide were told it was TV time, they knew that probably meant “The Magic School Bus.” They found the books in their pediatrician’s waiting room and in their school’s library.
The series was later spun off into other products and programs, including a live show at Madison Square Garden in 1999 and a Netflix series, “The Magic School Bus Rides Again” (2017-2021).
The New York Times credited the series with “the freshest, most amusing approach to science for children”; called Ms. Frizzle “the world’s best-loved weird science teacher”; and estimated that “at one time or another practically every child encounters ‘The Magic School Bus.’”
Mr. Degen ensured the accuracy of his drawings by, for example, inviting over a Yale dinosaur expert, who plunked real dinosaur teeth on his dining room table. Scholastic put the books through a kind of peer review, ensuring they met the approval of subject-area experts before publication.
Mr. Degen and Ms. Cole, who died in 2020, were paired together by Craig Walker, a Scholastic editor who had the idea about a zany science teacher who takes her class on field trips.
Mr. Degen and Ms. Cole made comments about each other’s work through the intermediary of their editor, enabling the authors to form an enduring friendship.
Initially, they both lived in New York City. In 1989, Ms. Cole bought a house in Newtown. Within months, Mr. Degen decided to move there, too.
Bruce Michael Degen was born on June 14, 1945, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, where he grew up. His father, Hymie, color-matched pelts in the Manhattan fur district. His mother, Mollie (Rosman) Degen, was a stenographer for MetLife.
Bruce struggled to pay attention in school, but he never forgot how he was able to thrive when a sixth-grade teacher let him paint at an easel all through class and be quizzed on spelling orally at the same time.
He received a bachelor’s degree in art from Cooper Union in 1966 and a master’s degree, also in art, from the Pratt Institute several years later.
While working as a librarian at Cooper Union, he let a young woman named Chris Bostard skip a $23 fine for turning in late some books on Pieter Bruegel the Elder. They married in 1968. She survives him, as do two sons, Benjamin, an artist, and Alex, a comic book artist.
Mr. Degen worked full time as an art teacher in New York City public schools while also being a freelance artist and illustrator from the 1960s until the late 1980s, when the success of “The Magic School Bus” enabled him to work as an artist full time and to teach at colleges for fun.
He was also known for writing and illustrating “Jamberry” (1982), a children’s book about a bear searching for berries. (He called it a “nonsense poem.”) In 2012, he wrote and illustrated “I Gotta Draw,” which also stars an animal — a puppy named Charlie whose teacher lets him draw in the middle of class.
Mr. Degen often described feeling alienated as a young man by the world of professional artists. Stunts like painting yourself and rolling around on a canvas did not move him. The whole idea of making an artwork so someone could put it on the wall seemed “beside the point,” he told The Newtown Bee.
Then he attended an exhibit of work by Norman Rockwell. He saw that people there were having a good time. He remembered the art that he made in the sixth grade: It told stories. It was jokey.
He decided that he would not become a fine artist. He explained to The Newtown Bee, “You don’t see people chuckling in most fine arts galleries in Manhattan.”
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