My Teacher's a Chicken!: 02/02/25

My Teacher's a Chicken! by Alyssa Wilburn (2020) is a short book inspired by circle time playtime between teacher and students. The idea is to imagine the teacher as some for of creature. The first one is the titular chicken.

These kind of nonsensical statements, especially about an authority figure: be it a teacher or a family member or one's pets, need an internal logic to work. My teacher is a chicken because... My chicken teacher does... My chicken teacher eats.... Etc.

Or in the case of this book where the teacher is compared to many different things there still needs to be a guiding thread of logic. By logic, I mean a pattern, something that is predictable enough for children to grasp on to.

Take for instance, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. Here is a list of animals all looking "at me" but each new one is an animal and a color: while the specific sequence isn't predictable, the format is something that young children can understand and use to add to the list in the book.

This book, though, feels haphazard and random. And since it's so short, there's not enough time to feel like a pattern is going to be established. It does it's thing and then it's over. The text needs editing and a little more guidance to grab its intended audience.

Three stars

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