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"We're in space, Ralphie; this isn't a drill. You need to be serious."
—to Ralphie in “Kids in Space

Keesha Franklin is one of the major students in the Frizzle class, who was introduced along with Carlos in the sixth book in the original series, The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs.

In the TV series, she was played by Erica Luttrell in The Magic School Bus and currently by Mikaela Blake since The Magic School Bus Rides Again in 2017.

Background[]

She is the more level-headed student of the entire class, always wanting to “get the facts” about a topic. Because of her skepticism, Keesha usually gets into arguments, usually with Ralphie, who tends to live in his own imagination. Keesha is also shown to be ambitious, but unlike Arnold’s arrogant cousin, Janet, Keesha will stop her pursuit when she realizes that she is either wrong or putting her classmates in danger.

Before to her fifth-grade school year, Keesha was a student in Professor Valerie Frizzle's class. In Gets Ants in Its Pants, her teacher and her fellow classmates agreed to help make a documentary after ants for the school science fair, and proceeded to conduct them on a field trip inside of an anthill, where they produce and film on location. Keesha and the Professor went on "trial" in "In a Pickle". Keesha often gets into fights with the other students, especially with Ralphie. For example, in “Flexes Its Muscles”, the two got into a quarrel about a robot that the latter could build to do his chores so that he could participate in recess. When the Professor declares a field trip to the auto-parts shop to fix the Bus, Ralphie takes advantage of the trip and tries to prove Keesha wrong by building a robot out of car parts. But when the robot goes out of control, Ralphie eventually takes Keesha's side and destroys the robot. In Kicks Up a Storm, they also argued about the existence of Weatherman, a superhero that could create thunderstorms. During a field trip up in the clouds in which Ralphie takes the wheel as Weatherman, Keesha dares him to create a thunderstorm using the Weathermobile (the Bus's super identity), which he does and regrets doing. Keesha is also shown to be forgetful, as she and Arnold both forgot to do a report in "Gets Eaten". Like always, it was solved with a field trip. Keesha has a bit of a bossy side as well, taking total charge and directing the play in "Pigs in the Wind" with no help from anyone else. She shows competitive spirit and determination, as seen in "Goldstealer" when she organizes a spy mission with help from her classmates to prove one of her mothers' innocence when she is framed for stealing the gold medal for the World Wheel Games in Tokyo, Japan.

Appearance[]

Physical[]

Keesha has slight-tan skin, dark brown hair, and brown eyes. In the books and The Magic School Bus, her hair was styled in a similar vein to Professor Frizzle's. In The Magic School Bus Rides Again, her hair is styled in two buns, one on each side of her head. It is worth noting that in the first 26 episodes of The Magic School Bus Rides Again, her skin was noticeably lightened or "white-washed." This also happened to Tim. This was fixed in the show's third season.

Default outfits[]

Book series and The Magic School Bus[]

In the original 1986–2021 books and in The Magic School Bus, Keesha wore an oversized medium dark fuchsia sweater with a pastel blue stripe around it, cobalt blue tights, and fuchsia ballet flats.

The Magic School Bus Rides Again[]

Her current outfit consists of a pastel-orange dress, a magenta short-sleeved cardigan sweater, pastel blue socks, and black boots.

History[]

The Magic School Bus[]

Season 1[]

MSB S1 E4 072

Keesha thinking about the connection between pond scum and a tuna fish sandwich.

In the episode “Gets Eaten”, Keesha and Arnold find themselves in a terrible dilemma when they both forgot their “two beach things that go together” report. However, Arnold stepped in a pond and sullied his shoe on the way to school, while Keesha brought a tuna sandwich for lunch. The two manage to pull their report together during a field trip under the ocean and through the food chain to learn that the scum on Arnold’s dirty shoe (phytoplankton) is “connected” to a tuna fish. While the class tries to think of an idea for the science fair, Keesha comes up with the idea to make a movie about an ant that she followed into class in “Gets Ants In Its Pants”. She becomes frustrated when she cannot find a central ant to focus on in the ant hill, and she even clashes with Carlos, who is getting annoyed with her pickiness and bossiness. But a pep talk with Phoebe makes her realize that there is not just “one” star for the film, and that the film should be about all of the ants. She butts heads with Ralphie in “Kicks Up a Storm” when they argue over how weather works. She's further annoyed by him taking on the superhero alter-ego of Weatherman and conducting the class on a field trip through the sky.

Season 2[]

Rhought

Keesha still thinks the Professor is just a normal human teacher and not a vampire.

Keesha and Ralphie clash again in "Flexes Its Muscles" and "Going Batty." In the past, it's because he wants to build a robot to do everyone's chores; in the latter, it's because he is convinced that the professor is a vampire. Keesha takes Professor Frizzle to "court" when she learns she had something to do with her prize-winning cucumber disappearing ("In a Pickle"), and even butts heads with Arnold, who serves as the Frizz's defense attorney, only to learn that her cucumber was pickled to preserve it.

Season 3 and specials[]

Maybe the ghost got ‘em

Keesha is against Janet's belief that there is a ghost haunting Walkerville's old theater/re.

In "Gets a Bright Idea," Janet is upset that the school chose Keesha's light show idea over her magic show for a school-wide field trip. Janet decides to prove that she can work magic with light to scare the class, but it backfires when Keesha realizes what she's up to. Janet, who mentions the fact that there is a ghost in the old theater where the light show was held, causes Keesha to dogmatically believe otherwise. She stays with the class at the theater after hours and notices that the "ghost" was just Janet using the Pepper's ghost trick on Arnold.

Season 4[]

Keesha

Keesha in the farm observing chickens.

In “Goes on Air”, Ralphie is upset that all the class has to offer is an empty jar in the town space capsule, but Keesha knows there has to be more to air. In "Sees Stars", she wants to see stars for herself before the class buys one for Dorothy Ann's birthday, much to Tim's dismay who wants to make deadlines. She finally learns firsthand after the third star they bought explodes into a supernova, that stars are made out of dust and gas.

The Magic School Bus Rides Again[]

Season 1[]

2017 Keesha

Keesha plans to take a selfie in "actual space" for her application to Kathy K. Kuiper's Astronaut Camp.

In Pigs in the Wind, Keesha directs a stage production of a sequel to The Three Little Pigs, featuring a tower made entirely out of bricks dubbed "the Sty in the Sky" that the pigs (played by Wanda, Carlos, and Arnold) use as a method of defense against the Big Bad Wolf (played by Ralphie), who is back for revenge. When Janet gives the Sty a bad review on her blog because the prop was made of fake bricks and could be destroyed in one touch, Keesha tries to prove her wrong by building it out of real bricks and making it sturdy, with the help of the Magic School Bus and the class. Keesha is almost finished with her application to Astronaut Camp, a camp for aspiring astronauts hosted by a famous one named Kathy K. Kuiper, in "Space Mission: Selfie", but the final thing she needs to do is to take a photo of herself in space. Jyoti opts to use a photo filter for the shot, but after Keesha hears about plans for a field trip into space to fix some satellites, she decides to take it in real space. Keesha stars as "Scarlet Scorch", a superhuman with pyrokinetic powers, in Tim's rock-cycle comic in The Battle for Rock Mountain. She works with the Tectonic Duo (Wanda, Dorothy Ann) to heat and crush Captain Rock Man (Arnold) into a metamorphic rock.

Season 2[]

In "Claw and Order", she and Carlos incriminate Wanda's bird friend, Marty the Magpie, for destroying and wreaking havoc on Ms. Frizzle’s classroom. The class goes on a field trip inside Marty's nest on the Magic School Bus, and find some things from their classroom inside it. In "I Spy with my Animal Eyes", after Arnold accidentally messes up Ratney's physiology using the Bus, Keesha thinks that a giant, invisible Ratney did not wreck the entire city.

Season 3 (Joanna Cole specials)[]

Vlcsnap-2023-06-23-15h56m33s151

Keesha confronting Laura Smythe, her mother's longtime bike racing rival known to her enemies as the Goldstealer.

In “The Frizz Connection”, Keesha appeared with Carlos and Ralphie in Hawaii with “The Frizz”, the part of Ms. Frizzle who happens to be her humorous side. She puts on a pair of nose-glasses (which happen to be wind-vision goggles) and learns about atmospheric rivers with her partners and the Frizz. In "Goldstealer," she is the main protagonist and gets some development. When one of her mothers, professional biker Angela Franklin, gets framed for stealing the gold medal to this year's World Wheel Games bike race, Keesha and the class become spies to figure out the real culprit, who is none other than her mother's longtime rival, Laura Smythe, who was caught cheating at the last competition.

International names[]

Note: Her family name, Franklin, is used in all versions of Space Mission: Selfie and Goldstealer.

Language Name/Title Meaning
French Keesha Franklin (sometimes spelled Kisha) From her English name.
German Chrissie From the English given name Chrissie, a diminutive of Christina.
Greek Κίσα Φράνκλιν Kísa Phránklin Her English name rewritten in the Greek alphabet.
Japanese キシャ・フランクリン Kisha Furankurin Gairaigo/wasei-eigo of her English name.
Polish Kitka Franklin From Kitka, a given name of Slavic origin. K is for "Kitka" like how K is also for her English name.
Russian Киша Франклин Kiša Franklin Her English name rewritten in the Cyrillic alphabet.
Spanish (Castillian) Keesha Franklin From her English name.
Spanish (Latin America) Rita Franklin From the name Rita, whose syllables rhyme with those of her English name.

Trivia[]

  • Keesha is an only child.[1]
  • In "Claw and Order" and "In the Zone", she is shown to be right-handed.
  • She and Carlos are the only students from the TV series to not be introduced in the first five books.
  • In the book continuity, she appears to be a transfer student, as hinted at the start of The Magic School Bus Inside a Hurricane when she tells Phoebe, "At my old school, our teacher didn't dress like that."
  • Her favorite reptile is the garter snake. [2]
  • Her original voice actress, Erica Luttrell, is also the voice of Sapphire on the 2013 Cartoon Network series, Steven Universe. She also played Princess Candy in Disney's Dave the Barbarian, the spokesmodel and reporter in the Nickelodeon's The X's (Wealth vs. Stealth) and Emily Kaldwin in the video game Dishonored 2.
  • In The Magic School Bus Rides Again, she became the only main female student to wear a skirt in her normal outfit.
  • In “Pigs in the Wind” and “Tim and the Talking Trees”, she doesn't transform into a tree.
  • Her English name is frequently misspelled as Keisha.
  • She is the student in the main eight-person class whose grandparents were revealed. [3]
  • She is the first character whose crush on Ralphie is implied. [4]
  • In the Windows/macOS game, The Magic School Bus Explores in the Age of Dinosaurs (1996), she is one of two students to appear in all three time periods. Arnold is the other.
  • Along with Wanda, Keesha has also had some experience with dance. She performed an arabesque on Mercury in “Gets Lost in Space”, and mentioned that she takes dance lessons in “Wet All Over”.
  • Keesha is one of the original eight students who made a pun in the original 52 episodes of The Magic School Bus, along with Tim, Ralphie, Carlos, Arnold, Wanda, Phoebe and Dorothy Ann.
  • During the concert in In the Haunted House, Keesha played the clarinet.
  • In the original series episode Revving Up, Keesha’s field trip suit changes colo(u)r from scene to scene. Before the class enters the Bus’s engine, her suit is medium dark fuchsia, and once they are inside the engine, the suit changes to a maroon/dark red colo(u)r.
  • She never had a focus episode in the second season of The Magic School Bus Rides Again.
  • "Keesh" is a nickname for her. Other students have similar nicknames, like Arn or Wan.
  • She had a FrizTab in season 1 of The Magic School Bus Rides Again and the beginning of the second season, along with Dorothy Ann and Jyoti. In Season 3, the 'Tabs get replaced by the FrizzPad.
  • Keesha was one of three females to fall subject to the "Carlos!" gag in the original 52 episodes. The others were Phoebe and Professor Frizzle.

References[]

  1. Brooke, Samantha. The Magic School Bus Rides Again: Meet the Class. 1st ed., Scholastic, Inc., 2017.
  2. Stevenson, Jocelyn, et al. “Cold Feet.” Scholastic's The Magic School Bus, season 2, episode 12, PBS, 25 Nov. 1995.
  3. Krauss, Ronnie, et al. “Going Batty.” Scholastic's The Magic School Bus, season 2, episode 4, PBS, 30 Sep. 1995.
  4. May, John, et al. “Kicks Up a Storm.” Scholastic's The Magic School Bus, season 1, episode 13, PBS, 3 Dec. 1994.

Navigation[]

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