OWLS MAKE TERRIBLE TEACHERS
Today I have two very special guests on the blog, who also happen to be my critique partners: author Kristi Mahoney and illustrator Chantelle Thorne. We are celebrating the release of their newest book together Owls Make Terrible Teachers, which comes after the adorable book Alpacas Make Terrible Librarians.
Published by Gnome Road on April 28, 2026, this is a hilarious book filled with cool facts that you don’t want to miss. I’m thrilled that today we get to know more about how it came to be from the author’s and illustrator’s perspectives. How interesting!
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A bit about OWLS MAKE TERRIBLE TEACHERS:
The last thing you expect at school is for your substitute teacher to be…an OWL?! Please BEWARE! Owls may be cool, but they make TERRIBLE teachers! You’ll be trudging through school in the middle of the night, dodging owl pellets, and don’t even ask about the field trip. Having an owl for a teacher is worse than talons on a whiteboard.
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Now on to our interview:
M. Kristi, I’m so glad to have you back on the blog and now with another cute and funny book! Can you tell us what inspired you to write this series and why this particular story about owls, teachers, and schools? How do you select the animals you’re highlighting in your series?
I love writing about animals and interesting facts about them so they often pop into my stories. I also love humor which can often spark when you pair two unlikely things together. This led to my idea of putting animals into unlikely professions. I started making two lists: animals and jobs. As I researched dozens of lovable animals, I noted which had the most interesting traits and where these traits would be most “terrible.” Owls and alpacas happen to be two of my favorite animals and they’re super interesting! As far as places, those that were most kid-friendly and could provide another hook (such as learning about a library visit or school day) naturally rose to the top of the list. These settings also provided a satisfying and natural arc. For example, with Owls, the school day starts, you have gym, some other subjects, lunch, recess and finally end with dismissal. Also, there’s something top-secret about these books that I can share with you. Although it’s the second book in the series, I actually wrote my first draft of Owls Make Terrible Teachers BEFORE writing Alpacas Make Terrible Librarians. Once Gnome Road acquired Alpacas, it was the brilliant idea of my editor, Sandra Sutter, to switch up the ending to “hint” at another terrible animal situation. It worked perfectly that the same cast of characters that encountered the Alpaca would head to school to tell their teacher and discover…Owls Make Terrible Teachers. Everything about these two books is ultimately better because of the team that helped create them.
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M. That is such a good story of how these two books came to be, and I agree the facts that you add throughout the story are fascinating and just make the book so much more fun. You’ve done a great job! Can you tell us what was your favorite scene to write in this story and which one was the most challenging?
K. My favorite scene to write was the gym class scene. As I was researching owls, the funniest fact about them was that they have extremely long legs. I had no idea and was giggling so much as I watched videos of owls running. There was no question that the owl teacher needed to be in a situation where he would have to run fast. Also, watching your teacher do any sort of physical activity is funny in itself. As for the most challenging scene, that would be the ending. I needed to incorporate (1) the moment of highest tension/frustration with seemingly no way out (2) a satisfying solution to solve this problem (3) a feel-good moment with the human teacher (4) a heart moment with the owl, AND, above that, I needed my “Haha” ending as well as a “wink to the reader”. Keep in mind that although I managed to come up with the words, my amazing illustrators, Chantelle and Burgen Thorne, had to figure out how to incorporate all of these events into only a few pages. I won’t give away the ending, but hopefully we succeeded!
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M. I love your answer, specially what you shared about how to come up with a successful ending. You absolutely nailed it! How was working on this book different from your previous one of Alpacas Make Terrible Librarians?
K. Because it’s a series, it was important that both books have a similar feel, familiar structure, and same second person narrative/voice. However, the setting, featured animals, and all the chaos had to be fresh and unique. The fact that a completely new character is introduced and that Owls Make Terrible Teachers takes place in the middle of the night helped (spoiler: owls are nocturnal). Of course, the words are only half the challenge. A lot of the credit for making each book feel similar yet uniquely its own goes to illustrators Chantelle and Burgen!
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M. I think this shows how much illustrators bring to the creation of the books and how magical it is when words and pictures come together to bring the story to life. How was it for you to meet the characters created by Chantelle & Burgen Thorne?
K. Meeting the characters that Chantelle and Burgen came up with was a moment I won’t ever forget. Because Alpacas was our first book together, I remember wondering what color the alpaca would be. When I first saw her, it was love at first sight. She was an incredible pink and purple with turquoise eye shadow and bells! She was absolutely PERFECT! There was no doubt in my mind that they’d come up with an equally perfect character for Owl and, sure enough, they did! I was giddy when I saw the turquoise owl with adorable ear tufts and that most unique tie! I have so much gratitude for being paired with the most amazing illustrators and also towards Gnome Road for believing in these books.
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M. I agree, Chantelle and Burgen are amazing and in that sense, I’d love to know what appealed to them about this series to make them wanna be part of this project?
C. As the illustrators for the first book in the series – Alpacas Make Terrible Librarians – we couldn’t wait for Kristi to write the next in the series for us to illustrate! We knew it would be Owls Make Terrible Teachers because >spoiler alert< the last page of Alpacas ends with the substitute owl teacher. These books are seriously funny (we giggle while we draw), and we love the combination of kids and animals, so illustrating them is a no-brainer – they’re irresistible!
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M. So true, they’re are adorable! Can you share how do you come up with the designs of your characters and how do you select the color palette for each project?
C. The very first thing we do is research what the main character ‘should’ look like – in this case, we pored over tons of owl images, noting things we particularly liked (for example, the size of eyes and ears, the plumage etc). Then we had a look at funny owls – comics and cartoons and popular images. Then we start putting together all the bits we like in our own style and trying out enlarging or reducing various characteristics. We try out a few different action poses for the character – what will he look like flying, sleeping, jumping hurdles(!) etc – and work out how he would express different emotions – angry or amused, for example. As we experiment with the character, something will pop up that we can’t resist incorporating. In this case, it was Owl’s tie. As a teacher, we felt it gave him a little edge of authority that perhaps a ‘normal’ owl wouldn’t have, but it turned out that he particularly wanted a tie in a crazy shade of orange, patterned with mouse skulls! It just suited his personality! Since Owls Make Terrible Teachers is the second book in a series of ‘Terrible Animals!’, and Alpacas Make Terrible Librarians has a very unique and wild color palette, choosing Owl’s colors was not a simple task! The palette had to keep the elements of the crazy and unusual combinations of Alpacas, without being exactly the same. Our Alpaca is a hot pink and purple, with turquoise eye shadow, so it seemed appropriate that the companion Owl would be a sassy turquoise with eye-popping orange glasses and necktie! Makes sense, right?
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M. That is so interesting! Thanks for sharing your research and creative process. Now, can you tell us how is it like to be a team of illustrators working on the same book? How does that work?
C. As a married couple, Burgen and I do lots of things together – we walk our dogs together (naturally), ride our horses together (quite sensible), and illustrate stories together (completely crazy!). It shouldn’t work – two people working on the same piece of art at the same time – but it does. People often wonder if we have a formula – we don’t. Or if there are any rules – there aren’t. Sometimes one of us has a particular pull to create the character, or the landscape for example, but we always ping-pong the art back and forth between us, fine-tuning it and tweaking various bits, until the end result is very much a combined effort of creative collaboration. Best job in the world!!
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M. It does sound like the best job in the world! How lucky you are! Finally, can you share which was your favorite scene to illustrate and why?
C. The night time field trip scene delighted and surprised us. At first, we weren’t too sure how we were going to show everything that needed to be shown. Imagine: a class full of kids in their colorful pajamas, none of them with a flashlight, following their substitute teacher (a flying turquoise owl) across a grassy field in the dead of night to find a midnight snack (which turns out to be – ick! – a dead mouse!). In the background, the school buildings are a dark shape, only one classroom has the lights on. We took a little creative licence here and decided to keep the kids and teacher as if the lights were on (BRIGHT!) against the dark background of the school and night sky. We LOVE how it turned out, and hope our readers do too!!
M. That was one of my favorites too! So funny!
Chantelle and Kristi thanks for sharing all this behind the scenes facts and processes. I wish you both a lot of success with OWLS in the coming months as readers get to enjoy the story. I can’t wait to see what animal comes next! Hehe.
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KRISTI’S BIO
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Kristi Mahoney is the author of the picture books Alpacas Make Terrible Librarians and Owls Make Terrible Teachers. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, son, daughter, and seven fur-family members. She loves animals of all kinds, thinks teachers and librarians are pretty great, and believes life is better with a bit of laughter.
SOCIALS:
Website: www.kristimahoneybooks.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristimahoneybooks/
Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/kristimahoney.bsky.social
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086319960933
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CHANTELLE AND BURGEN’S BIO
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Multi-award-winning illustration team Chantelle and Burgen Thorne are eclectic bookworms who delight in the magic of stories… and sometimes, write a story or two themselves. As career illustrators, they’ve learned to draw really fast and are deft wielders of the digital brush. They’re at their happiest drawing kids’ stories with a dollop of humour and a ton of animals. When not at their desks, they can be found being towed around the countryside by their three rescue dogs.
Website: https://www.chantelleandburgen.com/
Email: chantelleandburgenthorne@gmail.com
Represented internationally by the marvelous Paul Moreton of Bell Lomax Moreton in London.
https://belllomaxmoreton.co.uk/picture-books/chantelle-and-burgen-thorne
Social media:
https://www.instagram.com/chantelle_burgen/
https://www.facebook.com/chantelleandburgenthorne/
https://twitter.com/chantelleburgen
We only really keep the Instagram up to date, and even then we don’t post regularly or
frequently. If someone wants to contact us, email is best! (address on website).
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Thanks for reading!
M
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Cover photo by Carlos Eduardo Gertrudes.
