Sonderbooks Book Review of

The Teacher's Pet

by Anica Mrose Rissi

illustrated by Zachariah OHora

Okay this book is extremely silly. So silly, I’m not even tempted to complain it’s not even slightly realistic.

It’s told as a straight story. Here’s the beginning:

However, it quickly becomes apparent in the illustrations that Bruno is not a frog. The book doesn’t say so, but we can see that Bruno is a hippopotamus. Mr. Stricter happily comments on how fast he’s growing.

In this book, it’s the kids who see the down side of the pet. As he gets bigger and bigger and bigger:

As Bruno destroys things because of his sheer size, Mr. Stricter happily comments that he loves to play and is so adorable.

The kids hold a meeting to figure out how to convince Mr. Stricter to let Bruno go. But despite all their objections, Mr. Stricter won’t listen – until Bruno swallows him whole!

At this point, I was telling myself, Okay, somehow they’ll get him out of there. And they do. After some stubbornness, the kids cleverly figure out how to make Bruno sneeze.

No, this story isn’t even slightly realistic. How did a tiny tadpole-like hippo hatch from a frog’s egg, anyway? But yes, it is very silly and very, very fun. As always Zachariah Ohora’s illustrations are perfect.