This book is very sweet, as it's message is to express to readers how much teachers do for their students. I think the author does a nice job of describing hardworking teachers in new form. As the author expresses all the things a teacher "can't" do, he is really showing all the teacher does do. For example as a teacher "can't spell 'CAT'", the author is showing a form a teaching a subject. In another aspect the author expresses that teachers "can't feed the salamander or guinea pig by themselves", this shows that the teacher is teaching responsibility. I loved how the illustrations enhanced each detail of the writing. The action was portrayed perfectly and to mix it up each person was really an alligator, which is always fun. ( )

I don't think I have laughed so much while reading a children's story. I adored this story because it was from a child's perspective on their teacher. The story talks about everything teachers can not do but it is not what I originally expected. The students talked about how the alligators can't clean the chalkboard by themselves or how they can never be tardy. Also for some reason they can never feed the classroom pet by themselves because they always ask for help. It was full of silly things like that seen from a child's eyes about the questionable things a teacher does. I had never really thought about the perception of the things that teachers do from a child's eyes. I guess they would question why teachers always ask for students help because they are the teacher they should be able to do it by themselves. What they do not know is that everything a teacher does is to done to teach the student. A teacher never cares about looking or acting silly if it is going to help her students. I can see my students in the future asking some of these questions but overall the main idea of this story is teachers do what teachers do best and that is teaching their students every moment of the school day. ( )

A simple repetitive structure for the entire book laced with wordplay and the cleverness made this book a lot of fun to read. I enjoyed it immensely. ( )

Genre: Informaitonal
Age Appropriateness: Primary
Media: Mixed Media
Review: This book is a good example of informational because the author is making statements about what teachers can do and can't do. For example one of the statemenets is "teacher can spell mississippi and encyclopedia, but cant spell cat." At the end there is a statement about what teachers can do and that is "teach." ( )

This book is a realistic fiction; though teachers can actually can do most of these things they don't because, well they are teachers.
This book could be used to show students that teachers aren't perfect and that they (the students) are just as important.