  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 05/01/2018 *Starred Review* A strange substitute teacher has arrived in the classroom! When a cameo drawing shows their regular teacher, Mrs. Giordano, at home feverish and green-faced with a thermometer in her mouth, the children realize they must endure Miss Pelly, who sports large red cat-eye glasses and seems clueless. She can’t pronounce their names correctly, ignores their homework, skips the turtle’s “Tank Tuesday” cleaning day, and cancels their beloved library time and storytime. Instead, she laughs a lot and reads strange little poems about crocodiles, pelicans, and even underwear! A pigtailed girl records the day in a series of epistolary poems (e.g., “Dear Library,” “Dear Lunch”), her oversize eyes swimming with (literally) ocean waves of tears. In a final about-face, she writes to Mrs. Giordano, “it’s OK if you aren’t quite ready to come back tomorrow . . . sometimes you’ve got to mix it up a little. You know?” Caldecott winner Raschka’s childlike illustrations in vivid watercolor and gouache are joyful and expressive, reminiscent of Matisse’s fauvist portraits and busy backgrounds. He imaginatively uses fonts and school scenes to emphasize how children see their world in the classroom. Pair this with Harry G. Allard Jr. and James Marshall’s Miss Nelson Is Missing! (1977) for a fun read-aloud. - Copyright 2018 Booklist. School Library Journal - 08/01/2018 PreS-Gr 2—Just when you think you've got the school routine down pat, a substitute shows up and does everything differently. In a series of short poems, an unnamed narrator apologizes for the deviations from the norm: the roll call is mispronounced, the homework isn't collected, the turtle's tank isn't cleaned, and so on. Raschka's good-humored watercolors take all this disruption just seriously enough. The spread with Miss Pelly's "back-of-the-head eyes" gazing attentively through her red, cat's-eye-framed glasses is particularly effective. By the end of the day, the narrator has adjusted and even discovered something new: she likes poetry thanks to the anthologies Miss Pelly shares. All school children deal with substitute teachers somewhere along the line; this title will help them embrace a little flexibility. VERDICT Every elementary school library will want a copy and it won't be out of place in public libraries or homes, either.—Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Library, NY - Copyright 2018 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Loading...
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