Module 1 - Miss Smith’s Incredible Storybook

image from www.amazon.com

Garland, M. (2003). Miss Smith’s incredible storybook. New York, NY: Puffin Books.

Summary –

Zach’s first grade teacher, Miss Smith is something different from what he’s come to expect in a teacher.  In her hands, story-telling time comes to life, with the characters leaping off the page and into the classroom.  Zach and his fellow students find themselves in the middle of the action. However, things go awry on the day Miss Smith is late for class. The principal, Mr. Rittenrotten, begins to read from Miss Smith’s magical storybook and is spooked when the characters from the story invade the classroom.  He leaves the classroom in a panic, looking for help.  Student after student all take turns reading snippets from different stories, and the characters from various stories all vie for attention and soon overrun the hallways of the school.  When Miss Smith finally arrives, she’s able to restore order to the mess, reading each story from beginning to end and returning each cast of characters back into the book.

Lucien’s thoughts –

I think the book uses very exciting language to show how a story can come to life in the hands of an able storyteller.  Zach can “feel the breeze in his hair and hear the waves pounding on the side of the ship.”  It uses vibrant language that engages the senses to show how a story can transport the readers into a world of imagination.  It also reinforces good reading skills in that the chaos created when everyone reads little bits of various stories is reversed when the teacher reads each story from beginning to end.

The illustrations are brightly colored and rich in detail.  For example, as the children are listening to a story about pirates, the classroom changes into a pirates ship, its deck full of student desks and its borders filled with peg-leg pirates, pirates with eye-patches, and a chest full of gold. Later, as the children cause confusion reading from different stories, the pages are filled with character from various well-know children’s tales: Little Red Riding Hood, Robin Hood, Dorothy, Tom Sawyer, Humpty Dumpty and others. Miss Smith is distinctive in her bright red glasses, wild red hair, and punk-rock leather jacket.

Librarian’s use –

One of the ways to discuss the book with young readers is to invite the audience in helping you identify some of the characters found in the stories illustrated in the various pages of Miss Smith’s Incredible Storybook and see if the audience can tell you what story they come from.  This exercise connects this book about reading with other books that the children might want to explore.  It would be handy for the librarian to have picked out copies some of stories in question: the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, the story Robin Hood, the Wizard of Oz, the story of the three little pigs, Alice in Wonderland, etc.  You can then ask the audience to think about what would happen if the characters swapped places with characters from other books; would the story still be the same?  what would be different?  You can also invite the readers to think about their favorite book, and ask them to draw a picture of their favorite book character.

Other reviews—

Threadgill, C., Jones, T. E., Toth, L., Charnizon, M., Grabarek, D., & Larkins, J. (2003). Miss Smith's incredible storybook (Book). School Library Journal, 49(10), 125.

Zack's exciting new teacher has a magic storybook. When she opens it up and reads aloud, the characters pop out and bring the tales to life right before the students' eyes. But Miss Smith's book isn't for everybody, and when stuffy Principal Rittenrotten has to fill in for her one morning, the dragon, princess, and knight that materialize from the pages send him from the room in a panic. The only way to make them disappear is to finish their respective stories, but Zack's classmates keep beginning new ones instead, until the school is overrun with Goldilocks, the Mad Hatter, and other such characters, seen vividly cavorting across the full-page spreads. Fortunately, Miss Smith shows up just in time and returns them to the safety of the book's pages, leaving the principal confused and her students forever in her debt. The lively, bright illustrations have a glossy, computer-generated quality that young readers will appreciate. Miss Smith wears a black leather jacket and a lapel button advertising "The Clash," and has a punk-rock hairdo. A satisfactory addition to most collections.

Miss Smith’s incredible storybook. (Book). (2003). Kirkus Reviews, 71(11), 803.

Zack's new second-grade teacher confounds his expectations, not so much with her black leather jacket and flaming red brush-cut, as with the big, ornately tooled book she carries--which, when opened, disgorges real pirates, pigs, knights, dragons, and the like as she reads. When Miss Smith is late one day, the Principal, and then the children, get hold of her book, and because they can't manage to finish the stories they start, utter chaos ensues until she sweeps in to restore order. Using saturated hues and crisply drawn figures, Garland crowds the classroom with lively characters, many of them recognizable from classic stories and folktales. A brief but animated invitation to the pleasures of reading, as well as a tribute to unconventional teachers everywhere.