Review from Newsbusters New Magic School Bus to Kids: Use Clean Energy or Monsters Will Eat You Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The Magic School Bus is back in the new Netflix series The Magic School Bus Rides Again! Overall, it’s still a nice, fun 13-episode series like we remember from when we were kids, but with some left turns. There is a pretty predictable take on climate change propaganda for little kids, but that wasn’t the worst. That dubious honor goes to the episode that teaches kids that a monster will eat them if they don’t use alternative clean energy sources.

Of course, conserving energy is a good thing and we should be kind to the earth, but this climate change hysteria is taking over. Usually, somebody will say that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming, and I was surprised that figure didn’t come up in this episode. Could it be that they know how easily debunked that number is? Given the way Dorothy Ann presented man-made climate change as fact, I doubt it.

This issue tends to play incredibly well in the mainstream media, as they use climate change as the universal bad-guy, so I’m sure there were plenty of parents who actually thought this episode was a good idea. I find it hard to believe any parents were happy about this next one, though.

https://www.mrctv.org/embed/518271

Episode 12, “Monster Power,” teaches kids that a monster will eat them if they don’t use alternative clean energy sources. Albert, one of the students, has seen a movie in which the evil monster loves pollution and is “coming for us next for what we’ve done to this planet!” With the class camping in the woods, Miss Frizzle and the other students help him come up with clean energy alternatives (wind, water, etc) so they won’t be eaten. Instead, Miss Frizzle could tell him that monsters aren’t real, but I guess that didn’t occur to her.

While it makes sense to teach kids the science of pollution and about all kinds of energy (I wouldn’t have minded some talk about oil in the dinosaur episode, to be honest), why would they tell kids that a monster will eat them for using the wrong energy source? I may not have the teaching credentials of Miss Frizzle, but I’m pretty sure that’s not scientifically accurate. They must really hate fossil fuels as much as their friends on the left. Keeping in mind that the TV-Y rating for this series means it’s for kids 2-6, I’m sure there are going to be some parents pretty irked at bedtime when kids are scared of the blot monster.

Overall, this is a cute series and fun bit of nostalgia for those of us who enjoyed the original books (or TV series) as kids, but I could have done without the climate change propaganda, and telling kids that traditional energy sources attract monsters is way over the top. Can’t kids just learn without an anti-scientific social agenda?