Scholastic: An Omnibus Book

June 2003 $12.95

138p pb

ISBN: 1-86291-516-4

This is the second book about Harriet Huxtable. Harriet and her friend Sophie want to keep their favourite teacher, Mr. Penny, who is going to get a job in the city. They decide that the only way to keep Mr. Penny at their school is to find him a wife. Harriet goes to dinner and interviews four women but they are all unsuitable for Mr Penny. The girls eventually find the perfect wife for Mr Penny, Jenny the nurse, but it turns out that Mr Penny has got a 3 year contract at their school. One day while Sophie and Harriet were walking in the park they were delighted to see Mr. Penny and Jenny having a picnic.

Harriet Huxtable & The Trouble With Teachers was a realistic sort of book and would appeal to children ten years and younger, but no older because the children in this book are in that age group. The topic of the book is finding a suitable wife for Mr. Penny and it shows how much the children in Mr. Penny’s class like him.

This book is very well written because it always has something happening. The excitement runs the whole way through. It is good how things that Harriet says and does carry on through to the end. The illustrations on the front tell the readers a lot about Harriet by the rat on her shoulder and the list of Mr. Rugless’s bad points behind her. This was a good book but not for older readers. I would recommend it to children ten and younger.

Sophie and Laura, aged 13, Kingscote, Kangaroo Island, South Australia