My Teacher's Secret Life [Hardcover]

Stephen Krensky (Author), Joann Adinolfi (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1996

A young boy believes that all teachers eat, sleep, and live at school and never leave the building, until one day he spots his teacher shopping at the local supermarket and has to find out how this one was able to sneak away from the rest and why she did so.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Schoolkids are naturally fascinated by their teachers. They stand in front of the room all day long, demanding attention and holding forth on one new topic after another. What type of lives do these odd characters have? In this funny story, one precocious lad thinks he knows how teachers live: after school they play in the gym, hear stories in the library, eat leftovers in the cafeteria, and sleep in their classrooms. But then when young Sherlock sees Mrs. Quirk at the supermarket, the mall, and in the park he makes an incredible discovery. His teacher has a secret life! What if the other teachers find out? A charming, bright, and engaging tale about school roles, personal identity, and partial knowledge that will enlighten and entertain young children. (Ages 4 to 7)

From Publishers Weekly

Teachers seem so at home in the classroom that it's entirely possible that they eat dinner and sleep there as well. In this tongue-in-cheek expose, reminiscent of Judy Finch and Kevin O'Malley's Miss Malarkey Doesn't Live in Room 10, a boy imagines that his teacher, Mrs. Quirk, spends her off-hours eating cafeteria leftovers, doing calisthenics with gym teacher Miss Whistle and listening to librarian Mr. Peruse read stories. The narrator even explains a longstanding mystery: teachers "keep pajamas and inflatable mattresses in their bottom left desk drawer, the one that locks with a key." Krensky (Dinosaurs, Beware!) wittily constructs then deflates the narrator's hypothesis: after the young sleuth spies Mrs. Quirk at the mall and in the park, he concludes that she's leading a "secret life. I just wonder when the other teachers will get suspicious." Adinolfi (The Egyptian Polar Bear) provides fanciful, almost surreal artwork, with lollipop-shaped trees and flowers that echo Mrs. Quirk's round glasses. The illustrator favors curves and circles, with few hard angles, and paints in carnival-bright fuchsia, chartreuse, red-orange and bright blue. Such wacky art, while pleasing to the eye, works against the deadpan humor of the narrative. Ages 4-6.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers; 1st edition (August 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689802714
• ISBN-13: 978-0689802713
• Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 8.5 x 10.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,893,642 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My thoughts on My Teacher's Secret Life, October 10, 2001

By 

An 8-year old reader (Catlett, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Teacher's Secret Life (Hardcover)

I think this book is very funny. In this story the little boy thinks the teachers stays at school all the time. The little boy thinks that the librarian reads to the teachers before they go to bed at night. He thinks the cafeteria ladies cook dinner for the teachers. He thinks the gym teacher makes them do exercises. He thinks the music teacher makes the teachers dance. He also thinks the art teacher makes them draw pictures. On one weekend he sees the teacher roller blading with a strange man and a little girl that looks just like his teacher. So he realizes that his teacher goes home at night. But what about the others!!