Miss Nelson is Missing!

Title: Miss Nelson is Missing!
Author: Harry Allard and James Marshall
Published: Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston
Date: 1977
Summary: The kids in Room 207 take advantage of their teacher's good nature until she disappears and they are faced with a vile substitute.
Age level:8-10
Strenghs: I like how Miss Nelson and Miss Viola Swamp are very different from one another. Miss Nelson wears a pink dress (signifying her kindness and sweetness), while Miss Swamp is dressed all in black, with black hair and dark lip stick (the kids called her a witch). I liked how Miss Nelson put things into her own hands instead of the children getting too wild when she dressed as Miss Swamp. You know that it was her when at the end, it shows her in bed with the closet slightly ajar with a black dress and wig inside it. I also like the watercolor effect on the page and the design of the characters. The children looked flat and round, while the adult looked tall and narrow. Overall this is a good story about what would happen if the students in room 207 do not behave (and take advantage of their teacher). It's a lesson telling students to listen to the teacher and follow the rules.
Concerns: Though this story is good and there are some humor, there were a few things I noticed. First, I noticed that the classroom is very small. Not only were there nine students in the class, but the room itself looks like a little box with limited space, with the blackboard in the back of the classroom instead of the front. There was a scene in the story where the students were making assumptions about where Miss Nelson had gone. One of them suggested that she was eaten by a shark, and next to the text was a page that showed a bunch of sharks. One of them was eating someone, with the legs and one hand sticking out (somewhat of a gruesome scene that might not be appropiate for children).
Comments: Overall, this was a pretty good story, and I would recommend this to older children in the second to third grade because I think they would understand the moral of the story.