The Substitute Toad: Early Reader 7-8 Age Category

Katie, Jess and Cassie form the 5S Protection Team to fight off the class’s new evil toad substitute teacher and her child-gobbling tadpoles.

7-8 age category | 9 Chapter Picture Series Book

5777 Words

Chapters

Chapter 1: Listen Carefully if you want to live

Chapter 2: Class 5S Science

Chapter 3: The Spawn of Tapioca

Chapter 4: Back to the drawing board

Chapter 5: The 1st test

Chapter 6: Fresh Water Frog

Chapter 7: A Hiss and a Croak

Chapter 8: We’re Doomed!

Chapter 9: Hop Along

The Substitute Toad: Synopsis

When class 5S get a new substitute teacher Katie and her best friend Jess suspect she’s not quite what she seems. Mrs Froschman’s odd appearance and deep love of frogs lead them to the conclusion that she must be a human-eating toad with blood-thirsty spawning babies.

Determined not to be next week’s frog supper the girls devise a plan to debunk her evil scheme.

First, they swap Mrs Froschman’s precious frogspawn for pre-made Ambrosia tapioca pudding. However, their decoy is short-lived when Mrs Froschman picks the jar up after lunch and a thousand buzzing flies send the class CRAZY. Though at least they’d sorted the child-eating problem.

That is, until a fresh jar of tadpoles greets them in class the next morning. A classmate Cassie Peter’s reveals that she’d seen Mrs Froschman eat one of the flies and is quickly enrolled into the newly formed ‘5S Protection Team’. Each girl devises a plan to prove Mrs Froschman and her tadpoles are child-gobbling toads.

They pour water onto her chair, fill her hair & drink with salt and borrow Jess’s brother’s snake. Yet when the snake goes missing the girls finally have to admit everything to their head teacher.

Their parents don’t believe their proof that Mrs Froschman isn’t entirely human either and the next morning everyone is called into the school for an emergency meeting.

Yet down the hallway the sound of a screaming 5S can be heard. The classroom is filled with tiny jumping froglets and it’s up to the 5S Protection Team to save the day.

Mrs Froschman has of course disappeared, but the girls save the class from rash-inducing frogs and the grownups can’t help but congratulate them. 

The grown-ups might not believe them, but Katie knows the truth. So, if you see Mrs Froschman, beware – she’s could be at your school next!

Listen Carefully if you want to live

What I’m about to tell you is serious. More serious than the time Becca Moore got trapped in the school loos and the caretaker had to unscrew the door from its hinges to get her out. Even more serious than when my best friend Jess fell over in the playground and everyone (even the teachers) thought she’d broken her arm.

After the 1^st week back from Christmas, our Head Teacher Mrs Mole, told us Miss Ellis had caught the flu really bad. Miss Ellis is the second-best teacher in school so everyone in 5S was worried.

Mum said that Miss Ellis had broken up with her new boyfriend and that it “really wasn’t acceptable behaviour”. I’m not sure what she meant but a break up and the flu at the same time: that’s just back luck!

But it was Miss Ellis’s break-up flu that risked all the lives in class 5S because the next day Mrs Mole introduced us to our new substitute teacher, Mrs Froschman.

We’d had a substitute teacher before. Back in year 4, Miss Short left her fake tan lotion on for 10 hours instead of one by mistake. She refused to come into school for 3 whole days because she said she looked like a bottle of Fanta. But THAT substitute teacher was just for 3 days and THAT substitute teacher was nothing like Mrs Froschman.

In fact, none of us had ever seen ANYTHING like Mrs Froschman.

The grown-ups might not believe us but you need to…

Class 5S Science

Tuesday afternoon is Science class. But this time, instead of Miss Ellis, Mrs Froschman walked into class. We’d got a quick look at her when Mrs Mole introduced her just before lunch break but when I saw her again I looked over at Jess who was looking back open-mouthed.

Mum says Jess has a face that “never lies” which means you can tell what she’s thinking before she’s even said anything. It’s true. She’s practically given up trying to be nice to Bradley Crown when she sees his paintings because her face looks like she’s smelt a fart (art isn’t Bradley Crown’s best subject).

Jess looked gobsmacked. Mrs Froschman was a strange looking lady. She was short and round and it seemed to take her ages to do anything but I think that’s because she was really, and I mean, really old. She told us that while she was around, we were going to learn about lifecycles and brought out a big jar filled with water and lots of frogspawn.

This was weird because we’d already done lifecycles last term and we were now learning about space. Mrs Ellis had set us model solar systems for homework but Paul Simmond’s mum misread the homework help note and thought he had to actually ‘model’ the solar system. He’d come into school dressed as the sun orbited by lots of planets on string. 

Cassie Peters next to me whispered that that didn’t sound like a good idea. The last ‘Class pet’ ended in the C5S hamster being brought back to life on top the school radiator that particularly cold weekend when James Dennie had forgotten to take Mr Nibbles home. Cassie said it was a ‘resurrection’ which meant Mr Nibbles had risen from the dead but Miss Ellis said it was just a long sleep some animals do in the winter called hibernation.

Mrs Froschman put the jar down and everyone crowded round to get a look. “Now class, we can all watch my babies grow and learn about their lifecycle together, but I don’t want to see anybody touching them, OK?”

‘BABIES?’ I thought. Even my older sister who loves creepy creatures wouldn’t call frogspawn her ‘babies’. That was weird.

Jess noticed it too, and on the walk home from school she froze – a thing she does when she has a ‘light bulb moment’ as she calls it. I wasn’t happy about this particular light bulb moment because it left us holding up traffic in the middle of a zebra crossing! So, with an angry driver beeping their horn at us, Jess whispered “What if they really are her babies?”.

“Think about it Katie” said Jess back at mine once we’d persuaded my parents that we needed an emergency sleepover after the light bulb moment. “Mrs Froschman looks like a toad.” she said, “Her wrinkled bumpy skin, her short, fat body and her big eyes through those round glasses”.

Jess was pacing the room like a detective. I covered my mouth to hold in my belly laugh. “…and if that wasn’t enough she’s even told us herself that those FROGS are her babies!” she shouted.

If it was true we needed to know what we were dealing with. I searched ‘Toad facts’ on my Ipad to see if there was anything missing from what Mrs Froschman has already told us earlier in class.
 

“The Toad is a common name for certain frogs that are characterized by their dry, leathery skin and short legs. They are cold-blooded and live in fresh water as well as dry land. They are Carnivorous – which means they feed on other animals like insects or worms. However, larger frogs and toads have been known to eat snakes, lizards and mice…”

Jess wrote down anything important.

Toad Facts 1.    Dry leathery skin 2.    Short 3.    Fresh water 4.    Carnivoroos Carnivaroos Meat-eaters

“That’s weird” I said, “Mrs Froschman never mentioned that frogs are meat-eaters in class today?”.

“Of course she wouldn’t. If large toads eat snakes, then what would a toad that’s as big as a person eat?” replied Jess.

Jess’s face said she already knew the answer.

“What if Mrs Froschman brought her ‘babies’ into class so they can grow up big and strong… with 5S as their meaty snack?” I replied.

This was getting scary.

“Those frogspawn ‘babies’ NEED to go.” said Jess.

The Spawn of Tapioca

The next morning we had a plan. We’d stayed up until 12.15am plotting it but it was perfect. We knew we had to get rid of the frogspawn but we couldn’t just leave nothing in its place. Mrs Froschman would soon find out. Instead we needed to create what my spy kit journal calls a ‘decoy’ which means create something that would look like frogspawn so nobody would notice… at least for a while.

We weren’t having any good ideas until Jess remembered that time she’d come over to my house for dinner and mum had served us Tapioca pudding for dessert. She said it was the grossest thing she’d ever seen and couldn’t even touch it with her spoon. I said I didn’t like it much either and mum said she only bought it for dad as he used to have it when he was a kid. Then dad admitted he’d HATED it when he was a kid and had been being polite all this time. Mum went really quiet and didn’t look at anyone (a thing she does when she is absolutely FURIOUS) and that evening we ate ice cream for dessert instead.

“Tapioca pudding looks like frogspawn Katie” said Jess and she was right. It was perfect. We snuck downstairs on our tippy toes at 12.05am and found a dusty tin of pre-made Ambrosia Tapioca at the back of the cupboard. Then 5 minutes later we’d prepared our plan of attack: I would get the can opener and a big jar in the morning before mum could see, Jess would wait until she was the last to leave for lunch break and take the child-eating frogspawn jar, then I’d pretend to need the loo, get the ‘decoy’ from my bag and make the swap complete.

And everything went according to plan. Jess took the frog spawn jar and poured the contents down the girls’ loo. She said it was totally gross and that when she flushed the loo, bubbles of frogspawn frothed up at her and she screamed so loud so thought she’d be found out. Meanwhile, after struggling to get the can open I filled my jar with Tapioca and water and we both met back in the lunch hall to celebrate our first successful spy operation.

After lunch we had maths and, apart from Mrs Froschman’s croaky voice making it hard for everyone to understand the maths questions – especially Peter Pike who put his hand up to ask her to repeat the question every single time – nobody had noticed the tapioca frogspawn.

Jess winked at me from across the room and nodded toward the jar. We’d saved 5S and they didn’t even know it. We were safe from the child-eating toads. That was until the class weasel Michael Fischer spotted us and, like the teacher’s pet he is, put his hand up.

“Mrs Froschman” he said, “I love the frogspawn, I wonder how many tadpoles there are in that jar.”

Mrs Froschman stopped and looked at him with shrivelled, beady eyes over her round glasses. Her skin looked even more leathery than yesterday.

She picked up the jar to start counting and from it burst a thousand flies that buzz around Mrs Froschman and out into the class room. The class scream so loud and people went CRAZY. Cassie puts her arms around her head and her head in her lap like the instructions say to do if your plane is crashing. Peter hid underneath his desk and started crying while Paul Simmonds climbed on his and laughed at the top of his voice. Jess and I hid under the tables too as flies take over the room.

“Note to self, flies LOVE tapioca.” I said laughing.

Jess was less impressed and said it was like being on a Bush Tukka Trial. A challenge from a programme her mum is ‘obsessed’ with which means she won’t let anyone have the TV remote while it’s on and she always records it on catch up to watch again even though she already knows what’s going to happen.

After things had calmed down and Peter’s mum had come to collect him because he started to have a panic attack, Mrs Mole our head teacher came in and said that “whoever pulled this prank should be very disappointed with themselves” and that Mrs Froschman didn’t need to do something as nice as bringing in real frogspawn to help show us the frog lifecycle.

I really wanted to shout out that Mrs Froschman wasn’t trying to be nice at all, she was trying to get us all eaten but I looked at Jess and we both kept quiet and agreed that at least we’ve gotten rid of the child-eating problem.

Or so we thought…