Because You Are My Teacher

K-Gr 2–A teacher leads her students on an imaginative trip around the world: “If we had a schooner, we would have our class at sea/And study the Atlantic, where the great blue whales roam free.” They tour the Amazon in a raft, view China’s Great Wall from a hot-air balloon, and survey Australia’s outback on hang gliders. Their creative land, sea, and air adventures also take them across the African savanna in an off-road truck, through Venice in a gondola, and into space in a rocket ship. The students recognize that “Our classroom is our vessel/always headed someplace new.”  Hall’s watercolor illustrations capture the variety of locales, from sun-drenched deserts to cool-blue oceans. As in Because You Are My Baby (2008) and Because I Am Your Daddy (2010, both Abrams), the momentum is driven by the rhyming verse. Although the scansion occasionally falters (“If we had sleek ski gear, we would cross Antarctic fields/To find the spot where penguin chicks are eating their first meals”), children will be interested in the different modes of transportation and out-of-the-ordinary sights.–Linda Ludke, London Public Library, Ontario, Canada