The Teacher’s Pet
by Anica Mrose Rissi
illustrated by Zachariah Ohora
Disney Hyperion, 2017. 36 pages.
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:
On the day the science project hatched,
our whole class was amazed.
We’d never seen Mr. Stricter so excited.
“I always wanted a pet,” he said.Our tadpoles grew and grew.
Soon it was time to release them into the wild.
But Mr. Stricter said we could keep just one.
We chose Bruno.
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:
Everyone could see that
Bruno was trouble.
Everyone except Mr. Stricter.
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.
Mr. Stricter flew out like a snot rocket.
He shook Bruno’s slime from his ears.
“Good news,” he said.
“I found the missing homework.”
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.
anicarissi.com
zohora.com
DisneyBooks.com
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