Oopsy, Teacher!

PreS-Gr 1–The accident-prone teacher who first appeared in Late for School (Carolrhoda, 2008) is back. After getting soap in his eye and jam on his tie, Mr. Bungles knows that it’s going to be an “oopsy” day. At school he tries to clean the hamster’s cage, but Nibbles escapes. The chase is on with teacher and students hurrying out of the classroom, into the gym, around the track, and into the town. The full-color cartoon illustrations capture the nonstop action, while the rhyming text–placing the next important rhyming word on the following page–builds momentum. The characters’ protuberant eyes, open mouths, and wildly flailing arms and legs add to the humor. Clocks regularly mark the time until Nibbles, dangling from the tail of a pig kite, drops into the middle of a pepperoni pizza at Tony’s Pizza. The weary teacher takes the animal and the class back to school for a pizza party. As his students say, “Yes, that’s our Mr. Bungles./We think he’s number one!/Even with the oopsies,/he makes our school day…/fun!” Pair this story with Cynthia Rylant’s The Great Gracie Chase: Stop That Dog! (Scholastic, 2001) for breathless, laugh-filled storytimes.–Mary Jean Smith, formerly at Southside Elementary School, Lebanon, TN