The kids wonder if the new piano teacher is a knight planning to take over Bailey City.

A silly series that creates more questions than it answers. It's great for formulating theories as well as predictions. The class dynamics should be very familiar to those of the Magic School Bus generation.

The Bailey School kids, Melody, Eddie, and Howie discover that Mr. Lance Lott, a teacher that plays piano, lives in an old mansion with strange paintings, wears armor, and rides a black horse. Could he really be a knight? A really fun mystery and great introduction to the chapter book. ( )

Genre: Realistic Fiction
Critique of Genre: This is an interesting example of realistic fiction because we get to see this child who has a vivid imagination and thinks his piano teacher, who dresses as a knight is going to take over the town. He pulls his friends into his wild imaginings and they all start this quest to solve a mystery together.
Characterization: Eddie, the boy who has the birthday in the beginning of the story, is a pretty flat character. Even though we he is the leader of the little investigation into the life of his "knightly" piano teacher his personality doesn't really come out and we don't know much elsa about him other than his wild imagination.
Media: pencil ( )