Title: Señor Smarty Pantaloons and the Mystery of the Missing Teachers
Author: Regina Davis and Carolyn Royer Spencer
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 978-1-45674-557-8
Pages: 32
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Reviewed by: Ella Vincent
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Pacific Book Review
Written as if it could be a storyboard for a new episode of the blockbuster hit movie Zootopia, co-authors Regina Davis and Carolyn Royer Spencer have created a wondrous world of animal creatures in Señor Smarty Pantaloons and the Mystery of the Missing Teachers.
Illustrated with somewhat creepy creatures of wolves, sheep and foxes transformed into an elementary school setting with robots and police, this story becomes a “Who done-it” with fanciful imaginary situations. When the school Principal Foxanna Powerpaws asked the teacher Mrs. Shelia Sheepshank to come to her office, nobody anticipated she would get balled out for losing a library book! The next day Mrs. Sheepshank failed to show up for work. The same scenario happed to another teacher, again resulting in her not coming into school the following day. What happened? They never missed a day of school in the past – now why all of a sudden are two teachers missing? Time to call in the authorities to investigate this possible crime.
With predators and pray, the possibility existed the teachers were eaten! (Yuck!) But those things happen in the animal world, plus Foxanna Powerpaws looked as if she put on a little weight recently. Ok, enough said about the plot. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise ending, but I’ll give you a hint – it has to do with jellybeans!
The story in the Señor Smarty Pantaloons series of books is light-heartily told by these two authors, each having many years of actual educational experience in the real world of schooling children. The combined use of storytelling techniques, especially geared to the youngsters which would giggle and be in awe of such imaginative events create a theatre in their minds with elements of drama, humor and inquisitiveness.
Available as an e-book or a perfect printed soft cover, Señor Smarty Pantaloons is a key character, which adorns the pages of the series of illustrated children’s books. Suitable to be read to toddlers going to sleep, or having this as one of their first books to read in their library, the slightly bizarre and imaginative stories will be having children looking differently at their pets, as well as the animals in the zoo.
Kudos go out to Davis and Spencer for their thoughtfulness in gentle storytelling and to Spencer in creating quite impressionable drawings done obviously by her human hand; rather than all of the computer generated graphics which kids are so accustomed to nowadays.
