Creative License: If I Built A School by Chris Van Dusen

Jack has some ideas for jazzing up his school.

For example, the foyer is dreadfully dull.

If I built a school, the first thing you'd meet
Are lots of cute puppies! They'd flock to your feet.

Heck! Jack would also add a few zoo animals to enliven the entryway! And getting to classrooms would be by pods shooting through pneumatic tubes!

Teachers in Jack's school would be spared the chores of cleaning chalky erasers or messy marker wipes:

Using a stylus, you write in the air.
No blackboard. No whiteboard. No, nothing is there.

And forget the chore of pushing your desks together for group sessions. Jack's got the best gismos to speed up those lessons.

These are my hover desks. See how they glide?
They even have bumpers in case they collide.

And Jack is thinkin' about a hologram of Lincoln--making a history lesson a 3-D session!. And to spice up gym sports, how's about trampoline-floored basketball courts? Or a cooling perimeter pool? And how about perks for the playground? Ziplines way up to the sky? And a twisty slide from three floors high?

And for sure, field trips should out-sizzle Ms. Frizzle in Jack's versatile vehicle which can morph-- from undersea to outer space--or any old place!

A guy can dream, can't he? In Chris Van Dusen's funny, fantasy picture book, If I Built a School (Dial Books, 2019), Jack's dream school has something for everyone, from critter-crazy kids to gismo geeks. Van Dusen's bouncy rhyming quatrains make this one a breeze to read, aloud or solo, and Van Dusen's brand of Seussian illustrations give Mulberry Street a run for the money in this new top-selling hit. Younger kids will laugh at the preposterous silliness, and older students will find the story line a great springboard for imaginative writers and young inventors, one that will fire up some creativity among the primary grade set.

Author-illustrator Chris Van Dusen also has two other popular book in this series, If I Built a House and If I Built a Car.