My Teacher's Secret Life

by Stephen Krensky, Joann Adinolfi (Illustrator)

Overview

Everyone knows that teachers belong in school. But one day, Mrs. Quirk is spotted in the supermarket. And, as if that isn't bad enough, she is later seen trying on skates at the mall. Does she have a secret life? And just who is that girl that looks just like her — only smaller?
In this delightfully zany picture book, every child's curiosity is made wonderfully plain as Mrs. Quirk and her cohorts are found out at last!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780689829826
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	09/01/1999
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.20(d)
Lexile:	AD590L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 6 Years

About the Author

Stephen Krensky is the author of more than a hundred books for children, including How Santa Got His Job (an ALA Notable Book) and Big Bad Wolves at School. He and his wife, Joan, live in Lexington, Massachusetts. You can visit him at StephenKrensky.com.

JoAnn Adinolfi was born in Staten Island, New York. She grew up in a big, Italian family with lots of love and good things to eat. JoAnn studied illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany. She has lived in many different places and now resides in snowy New Hampshire surrounded by scientists. Her husband is a physics professor, her son is a marine biology major, and her daughter is a biology major. JoAnn works in a studio in her backyard, which everyone calls The Shed even after she put a sign on it that says “Studio.” When she’s not working, she loves to travel with her family anywhere and everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

Teachers seem so at home in the classroom that it's entirely possible that they eat dinner and sleep there as well. In this tongue-in-cheek expos, reminiscent of Judy Finch and Kevin O'Malley's Miss Malarkey Doesn't Live in Room 10, a boy imagines that his teacher, Mrs. Quirk, spends her off-hours eating cafeteria leftovers, doing calisthenics with gym teacher Miss Whistle and listening to librarian Mr. Peruse read stories. The narrator even explains a longstanding mystery: teachers "keep pajamas and inflatable mattresses in their bottom left desk drawer, the one that locks with a key." Krensky (Dinosaurs, Beware!) wittily constructs then deflates the narrator's hypothesis: after the young sleuth spies Mrs. Quirk at the mall and in the park, he concludes that she's leading a "secret life. I just wonder when the other teachers will get suspicious." Adinolfi (The Egyptian Polar Bear) provides fanciful, almost surreal artwork, with lollipop-shaped trees and flowers that echo Mrs. Quirk's round glasses. The illustrator favors curves and circles, with few hard angles, and paints in carnival-bright fuchsia, chartreuse, red-orange and bright blue. Such wacky art, while pleasing to the eye, works against the deadpan humor of the narrative. Ages 4-6. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

PreS-Gr 2Playing on children's common misconception that teachers live at school, Krensky and Adinolfi spin an amusing tale of what occurs in the building after three o'clock. The custodian leads a trash patrol, the gym teacher makes the teachers do exercises, dinner is served in the cafeteria, and a bedtime story is read by the librarian. The teachers just unlock their bottom left desk drawers (where they keep inflatable mattresses and pajamas) and prepare for pillow fights in the hall. When the young narrator spots his teacher at the supermarket, mall, and park, he concludes that Mrs. Quirk must have a secret life and wonders "...when the other teachers will get suspicious." Bold, full-color cartoons splash characters through settings as unrealistic as the child's imaginations. Teachers bear allegorical namesMiss Painter, the art teacher; Mr. Peruse, the librarian; etc. However, students and school personnel are presented in non-stereotypical gender and racial roles. A book that should provide giggles and spark lively discussions.Claudia Cooper, Ft. Stockton Independent School District, TX

School Library Journal

A boy figures he's got the scoop on his teacher's life once the last bell rings: Mrs. Quirk tidies the halls with the rest of the teachers, works out with the gym teacher, sups on leftovers from the cafeteria, listens to a story, and, along with her colleagues, unfurls an air mattress from her desk drawer at bedtime. One day the boy spies his teacher, Mrs. Quirk, at the supermarket. Later he observes her buying a pair of roller skates, then watches on another day as Mrs. Quirk skates in the company of a little girl (who looks like her) and a man who puts his arm around her.

Krensky (The Printer's Apprentice, 1995, etc.) faithfully captures the discombobulation that attends running into authority figures outside their contexts. The narrative is fresh and bright, its tempo clips along, and when the boy unexpectedly catches his teacher out of school, he never misses a beat. Adinolfi's eccentric, color-drenched artwork makes the after-hours classrooms look somewhat eerie, but mostly snug.

Kirkus Reviews