Review: I Know an Old Teacher

This story based on the old song "I know an old lady," is a zany take on that song written by teacher Anne Bowen. One day as she watched and listened to her students singing the song, she wondered what it would be like to have a teacher star in the song/story and she started eating the class pets one by one.

Fanciful and humorous, the story is told in sing-song rhyme so that you can almost hear the students saying the verses out loud:

I know an old teacher who swallowed a lizard.
Got stuck in her gizzard, our sweet Lizzie Lizard.
She swallowed the lizard to gobble the snake.
She swallowed the snake to gobble the rat.
She swallowed the rat to gobble the fish.
She swallowed the fish to gobble the spider.
She swallowed the spider to gobble the flea
that fell from her hair and plopped into her tea.

Artist Stephen Gammell's illustrations are done in watercolor, colored pencil, pastel and crayon. The illustrations are really the heart of the story as the students observe Miss Bindley, their mild-mannered teacher turn into a gobbling monster.

But there is a line over which she does not cross. Can you guess what it is?