My Weird School 12 – Ms. Todd Is Odd!

Dan Gutman's Ms. Todd Is Odd is a very funny supply-teacher story for 8 year olds about a stand-in who's far too keen on learning.

What happens

It's the twelfth My Weird School book. Miss Daisy is off sick, so A.J.'s class get Ms. Todd instead. She's brand new and super cheerful, and she looks EXACTLY like Andrea. For A.J. that's basically a horror film.

His day has already started badly. He's helped himself to a cool T-shirt from lost property (the "free stuff room", the boys call it). It turns out to be Andrea's.

As far as A.J. is concerned, you're supposed to torture a sub. So the boys cough every time she turns to the board, and he tells her his name is Ryan. Ms. Todd just keeps smiling and writing things down on a piece of paper. What IS she writing?

She teaches them loads. The solar system, the explorers, Australia, all in one morning. She swaps tag for a game where nobody's ever out and you just collect friends. A.J. is horrified. Then Mr. Klutz has some news for him that he'd really rather nobody found out.

Being inside A.J.'s head is the best bit. He's sure that learning too much too fast makes your head explode. He'd throw away five chocolate ice creams because he only likes mint choc chip. You get his outraged version of every lesson, and it's very hard not to laugh along with him.

It's an American book, so a supply teacher is a "substitute" or a "sub". Your reader will pick that up in about a page.

A.J. is at his naughtiest in this one. He punches a classmate hard on the arm as part of a "game". Later he chases Ms. Todd round the classroom holding scissors, because the boys have decided she's a robot who's done away with Miss Daisy. There's lots of jokey talk about murder, and a throwaway line about a dog in a story getting hit by a car.

It's all played for laughs. A child who takes things very literally might need to hear that the scissors bit is NOT one to copy. If your reader already loves cartoon chaos, they'll know exactly what kind of book this is.

If you've got a reader who's ever had a supply teacher (and wondered how far they could push it), they'll recognise a lot of this.

What to read next

And if they'd like to meet the teacher Ms. Todd is standing in for, go back to Miss Daisy Is Crazy, the very first book in the series. It's the one where A.J. tells his new teacher he hates school and she says she hates it too.