When their second grade teacher Mrs. Becker faints during class, Elizabeth, Jessica and their friends try to help her as only small children can: sending for the principal and reviving her with perfume in the place of smelling salts. Mrs. Becker is sent home to recover and the class gets excited at the prospect of a substitute teacher.

The next day, they arrive at school and plan all of the terrible ways they’ll make life hell for their sub. He turns out to be a nervous looking man called Mr. Pinecone (no, really), who deals with paper wads and aeroplanes and children in the wrong seats just as well as his appearance suggested he might. Elizabeth feels a little guilty and Caroline Pearce tattles on the worst offenders, but the rest of the kids think it’s a fantastic lark.

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Pinecone doesn’t sign up for a second day of disrespect. He’s replaced by a mustachioed man by the name of Mr. Marshall, who is far more adept at dishing out discipline to the class. He’s strict but not unkind—although the naughtier children in the class disagree with that judgement. When playing at the local park on the weekend, however, the children see him getting into the back of a police car, which quickly sparks off rumours of him being a terrible criminal. These are not silenced when Mr. Marshall turns up to school as normal on Monday; the class decides he must have escaped from prison. (Why he’d then bother to turn up to substitute teach is anyone’s guess.)

Excitement reaches fever pitch when Mr. Marshall walks into the school building with a police officer. The kids rush inside to find out the truth… which is that Mr. Marshall is a policeman himself, and is moonlighting as a sub while working nights as a cop. Frankly, I think the escaped criminal story was more believable.

I found this one a little bitty, probably due to there being a lot squeezed into a very short book. I think it would’ve read more smoothly if poor Mr. Pinecone had been left out.


(more analysis at Sweet Valley Spy

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