The Trouble with Miss Switch

The Trouble with Miss Switch by Barbara Brooks Wallace, 1971. Rupert is a budding young scientist, just entering the fifth grade, and his new teacher is an unusual woman called Miss Switch. A lot of teachers say they’ve got eyes in the back of their head, but it seems like Miss Switch really does. Right from the first, she seems to know what kids in class are doing when she’s definitely not looking. She even seems able to read minds at times, and when kids act up in class strange things happen. A spit ball thrown by a student ends up coming back and hitting him, and a class bully seems to get stuck while getting a drink from the drinking fountain. In spite of the strange things that happen around Miss Switch, the kids in class like her, though. She makes their lessons interesting, and their grades improve. She’s also much more fair than most of their other teachers. Other teachers play favorites in class, having “teacher’s pets” or treating the girls much better than the boys, but…