A review by choirqueer
Miss Nelson Is Back by Harry Allard

1.0

I feel like I might have a more favorable stance on this book if I had enjoyed it as a child, but I actually found it really frightening when I was young. I'm given to understand now that it's supposed to be very obvious that Miss Nelson has dressed up as the scary Viola Swamp, but I definitely didn't get that until I'd already been frightened by the book several times and I'm not even sure it would have improved things if I had known. Revisiting it as an adult, even though I do now know what's going on in the book, I think I still don't like it. It feels weirdly misogynistic to have a conventionally-beautiful young blonde woman dress up as an older, dark-haired, "ugly" woman in order to scare children into behaving. I can see why this was popular back in the early '80s, but I wouldn't recommend it now.

cw: teacher using fear to modify student behavior