Katie Kazoo Switcheroo – Doggone It!

Nancy Krulik's Katie Kazoo Switcheroo - Doggone It is a funny magic story for 7 year olds in which the magic wind turns Katie into her pet cocker spaniel.

What happens

Katie Carew has been waiting all morning to meet her new next-door neighbours. Then a car pulls up and out gets Mrs Derkman. Her teacher! The one with the most rules in the whole school!

Could anything be worse? Well, yes. Mrs Derkman loves her garden (she sings to her plants and talks to a stone troll called Sven). And she does NOT love Katie's cocker spaniel, Pepper. When her strawberries get eaten, she blames Pepper, and suddenly he has to go everywhere on a lead.

Katie knows Pepper didn't do it. But who's going to believe her?

That's when the magic wind comes back. It's a wild little storm that only blows around Katie and turns her into somebody else. This time she opens her eyes and everything looks yellow, blue and grey. She has a stubby tail. She's Pepper!

Being a dog is brilliantly silly. Katie can't stop herself sniffing the fire hydrant, and she eats a dropped bagel off the pavement (gross!). She's a vegetarian, but that barbecue smells amazing. And there's a squirrel who throws acorns at her and laughs. Of course, it all goes wrong in Mrs Derkman's garden, which only makes things worse for poor Pepper.

It's lovely how kind the story is underneath. Katie discovers who the real strawberry thief is, and instead of getting it into trouble she comes up with a very clever plan with her best friend Suzanne. It's all about seeing things from someone else's side, even a strict teacher's.

There are small funny touches everywhere too. Mrs Derkman's husband calls her Snookums and plays the ukulele. Katie's friend George calls her Katie Kazoo. At the very end, there are simple instructions for teaching your own dog to sit and stay.

If you've got a reader with a dog they adore (or one they're desperate to have), this is going to go down very well. Short chapters and lots of dialogue make it super easy to get through.

What to read next

Katie and her rule-loving teacher are back in I Hate Rules, another Katie Kazoo story, where Mrs Derkman reads a note out loud in class and everyone finds out about Suzanne's pink flowery underpants.