A Hippopotamus Ate the Teacher

A Hippopotamus Ate the Teacher is a children's book written by Mike Thaler, illustrated by Jared Lee, and published by Avon Books in 1981. It was later republished by Scholastic in 2011 for its 30th Anniversary edition.

A teacher named Ms. Jones takes her students to the zoo. She shows them various animals before they come to a hippopotamus. When trying to feed it a peanut, however, she leans in too far and is swallowed. Fortunately, Ms. Jones survives, and from inside the hippopotamus, she directs the class back to school. There, she teaches the class while she is still inside the hippopotamus. Eventually, however, the children miss her and shake her out of the hippopotamus' stomach, whereupon she resumes teaching.