I was browsing through the library today looking for new picture books, and instead got swept up by a 2005 gem! I sure wish I had seen this before I retired, it would have been a great book to share with my class. Author, Kelly DiPucchio has a wonderful flair for imagery and silliness. And illustrator, Guy Francis takes the story and runs with it!
Mrs. McBloom has been teaching since ‘long before that Armstrong fella set his tootsies on the moon’ and in all that time has never cleaned her classroom. Whenever anyone complained she simply said it was at the top of her to-do list, right above ‘take a fancy-shmancy cruise’. But now that it’s time for her to retire she realizes that the job is too big for her. She gives her students a homework assignment to come up with an idea to get the room clean ‘lickety split’. The last student to present her idea suggested that if everyone in town came in and picked up just one item the room would be clean. And since ‘nearly every citizen of Up Yonder had been a student of Mrs. McBloom’s at one time or another’ they all pitched in to help. The things they found in her room ranged from lost library books and eyeglasses to a postcard signed by President Roosevelt and a flag with forty-eight stars. Mrs. McBloom got a chance to shake hands with all her former students and she ‘bawled like a baby in wet britches’. The town had a huge yard sale and with the money they raised, they sent Mrs. McBloom on a ‘fancy-schmancy cruise’. The story ends with the ‘sweet, young Miss Bumblesprout’ announcing to her class in the ‘spiffed-up tidy’ room that they were going to plant pumpkin seeds. (Can you see where this is going?)
Now if that synopsis doesn’t make you want to run right out and get a copy, you’re either: a) not a teacher (or ever have been) b) not a kid (or ever have been) c) too busy teaching to read a great picture book or d) all of the above.
Juliana Lee 