MISS FOX’S CLASS GOES GREEN

As in their earlier release, Peace Week in Miss Fox’s Class (2008), Spinelli and Kennedy present a blueprint for social action. When her students wonder why Miss Fox is cycling to school, she answers that she’s “going green” to cut down on pollution. The children enthusiastically embrace her new attitude: Mouse abjures the long, hot showers she loves; Squirrel tamps down his consumerist lust for a new pair of sneakers. The children adapt to their privation with enormous ease. Aside from a remark or two about “keeping our earth healthy,” Miss Fox is silent about impending environmental doom, leaving the kids’ commitment to green living curiously without any sense of how their individual efforts make a collective impact. Does only half the job. (Picture book. 4-8)