School Library Journal Starred Review (Fri May 01 00:00:00 CDT 2020)

PreS-Gr 1 Miranda Montgomery considers herself an animal expertafter all, she is a devotee of the "Nature Joe Animal Show" and has studied his techniques in detail. If there is one thing she has learned, it's that animals should always live in their natural habitat. Imagine Miranda's surprise and glee when she discovers one such animal outside its regular environment. Mrs. Birdley, Miranda's teacher, is at the grocery store when she clearly belongs in her classroom. Miranda is all systems go and after a few botched and very humorous capture attempts, she is able to secure Mrs. Birdley in a trash can and roll her back to school. Miranda then proceeds to lock her teacher in a classroom. However, there is no rest for young Miranda because the very next day she spies her principal at the hardware store. Well, what's an animal expert to do? VERDICT Reynolds, award-winning author of Creepy Carrots! , has delivered another gem and children will relish Miranda's outrageous traps and the poor unsuspecting adults who are snared in them. A definite purchase for all children's collections and an easy choice for a read-aloud. Amy Nolan, St. Joseph Public Library, MI

ALA Booklist (Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2020)

Self-proclaimed animal expert Miranda Montgomery has honed her skills by watching the Nature Joe Animal Show every day. When she sees her teacher in the grocery store, Miranda is certain that Mrs. Birdley would be much happier in her natural habitat, the classroom. Miranda springs into action, constructing a pit trap, concocting a blueberry yogurt lure, and finally successfully capturing Mrs. Birdley inside a garbage can, which she then rolls down the street and into the school. Miranda is heartened by her success, until she spies the school principal looking at lawn mowers in the home improvement store. Aaron Reynolds' tongue-in-cheek text cleverly exploits the trope that educators have no life beyond the school. Emma Reynolds' digital illustrations highlight jungle green predominately, accented with neon purples, oranges, and yellows. Her cartoon-style characters feature prominent hair, button eyes, and expressive faces. Compositions are attractively varied, ranging from full-bleed spreads to single-page art and smaller, paneled illustrations. The text's use of terminology borrowed from nature videos (becoming "aggressive" and "natural habitat") adds to the fun.

Horn Book

When Miranda sees her teacher, Mrs. Birdley, "loose" in the grocery store, she springs to action. "Luckily, Miranda Montgomery had been preparing for this moment her entire life." She knows what to do from watching Nature Joe rescuing and returning wild animals to their natural habitats on her favorite television show. Bright retro-style illustrations show eager Miranda taking charge and planning elaborate traps as she imagines the grocery store's interior morphing into the wild setting of a Nature Joe episode. For bait, Miranda uses "low calorie" blueberry yogurt: "It was all Mrs. Birdley ever ate back in her natural habitat." Mrs. Birdley barely avoids falling into this trap, but in the end Miranda captures her in a garbage can. She rolls Mrs. Birdley back to her classroom habitat and locks her in. The illustrations offer extra details and side stories (including the deli worker's persistent attempts to return Mrs. Birdley's forgotten change purse). As the book winds down, it seems that the adventures are only getting started. Now that Miranda has some real-world practice, she gets right to work when she spots her principal, Mr. Canklestout, at the hardware store. The over-the-top comedy pairs well with the expressive stylized art to keep the book energetic and silly. Julie Roach

Kirkus Reviews

Well-meaning nature buff Miranda has a bad case of overgeneralizing.Miranda Montgomery adores the Nature Joe Animal Show, admiring the way the brown-skinned wildlife expert rescues wild animals who are lost or in distress and returns them to their natural habitats. With her Nature Joe polo shirt and green shorts on and her brown billowing hair, Miranda enters the grocery store to find her teacher, Mrs. Birdley, far from her natural habitat: school. She makes several failed attempts to capture the wily Mrs. Birdley-who is oblivious-but an oversized trash can finally brings her the success she has witnessed Nature Joe accomplish with lions, lemurs, weasels, and more. With Mrs. Birdley locked safely away in her classroom for the weekend, Miranda walks home confident…until the next day, when she spots yet another adult from school browsing wares in the home-improvement store. From this book's bright green cover to its lively endpapers, readers feel Miranda's assurance that her task is just as important (and as right) as Nature Joe's. Despite Miranda's suburban locale, every few pages her imagination overtakes the scene and overlays it with an all-green habitat where she becomes the rescuer. Her facial expressions aptly convey surprise and disappointment when her traps don't work as well as Nature Joe's, but when she succeeds, her confidence is palpable. Both Miranda and Mrs. Birdley have light-brown skin.A fun story for all the kids who think their teachers live at school, because where else would they live? (Picture book. 3-8)