Review: ‘Little Miss Teacher’ Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar

Little Miss Teacher is a great summer read which chronicles a first year teacher in an urban high school.  Looking no older than her students, Candace Turner, sets out to earn the respect from both the students and her fellow faculty members.  Along the way, she learns a series of lessons to apply to her own life. 

What many readers will be able to relate to is that post-college identity crisis when you are technically loosing the adult world, but a part of you doesn’t feel like you belong there yet.  (I think I was almost thirty before I felt like a full member of the adult club.)  There has been a literature gap for years in the new adult market—the reader market between young adult literature and adult literature.  This book, along with those like The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada help to fill this gap.  That Candace would have to earn respect of her students is understandable, but what I found fascinating was her interactions with the other teachers.  She relates more to the kids and often feels like a trespasser at work event.  I love the scene when the students guess her age at thirty and she is shocked to discover that they don’t see her as a peer, but as a full adult. 

I also enjoyed Candace’s misadventures in her personal life.  She almost succumbs to the charms of the Teachers’ Lounge Playboy and suffers from the unrequited love of one of her former college classmates.  Then, there is the relationship between her and her best-friend/roommate.  Both women are busy starting their new careers, but somehow, they have to find the time to be there for each other, too.  Together, they have to learn how to evolve their friendship from school girls to career women.

Overall, I give Little Miss Teacher…

Plot – 3 bookmarks

Character development – 4 bookmarks

Dream cast (otherwise known as who I pictured while reading) – Kat Dennings (Candace), Charley (Penn Badgely), Jake (Paul Walker), Megan (Katie Cassidy)