CONGRATULATIONS, MISS MALARKEY!

“Miss Malarkey has been acting really strange lately.” She sings to herself as she walks down the hall, she and her teacher friends giggle together, the words “quitting teaching” have been whispered and she inflicts an incredibly boring unit on weddings on the whole class in World Cultures: “Yuck!” Readers will tumble to the answer long before Miss Malarkey hands out invitations to her wedding, finally enlightening her students, but they’ll also recognize the children’s anxiety at the unsettling change in their beloved teacher. While the climax is decidedly anticlimactic—she returns after her honeymoon and tells the narrator to call her “Mrs. Malarkey”—the emotional journey of the children is both very real and rarely seen in books for this age. (Picture book. 5-8)