Katie Kazoo Switcheroo – Oh, Baby!

Nancy Krulik's Katie Kazoo Switcheroo, Oh, Baby! is a magic story for 7 year olds in which the magic wind turns Katie into her best friend's three-month-old sister.

What happens

Everyone in class 3A is talking about a film called Tornado. George and Kevin have seen it, which makes them famous for a whole morning. George stands up and reports that it was scarier than the adverts, and everyone stares.

Katie's mum says no. Suzanne's mum says no. And Suzanne, who has a baby sister called Heather, is furious about being treated like the baby when she is clearly the big one.

Here is the thing though. Katie does not actually want to see Tornado. She hates scary films. She just cannot say so, because Suzanne wants to go and Jeremy thinks it sounds daft and Katie is stuck in the middle again.

That middle is where this book lives, and it is very true to life. Whatever Katie says, somebody is going to be annoyed with her.

Then Heather starts screaming, Suzanne goes off for a bottle, Katie is alone with the noise, and the magic wind arrives.

Which is how Katie Carew ends up lying in a playpen in a nappy, being fed formula by her own best friend.

She cannot tell anyone. Babies do not talk. So she lies there working out that if the wind does not hurry up she will be having formula for dinner, glancing at the clock and getting crosser, until she forgets herself and says something out loud. Suzanne decides her sister is a genius and runs to fetch her mother.

The wind has picked Katie before. She tells you so herself, which means a reader can start with this one and know exactly what is going on. She has been a class hamster once. She knows the difference now between the magic wind and ordinary wind, which is a lovely small detail.

It is a short book with short chapters and a joke or a disaster in most of them. George tells terrible ones (what did one cucumber say to the other cucumber?) and they are exactly the sort your reader will repeat at tea for a fortnight.

A note on when it was written. Suzanne has just bought a CD at the mall by a band called the Bayside Boys, Jeremy edits the class newspaper on paper, and nobody has a phone. None of that gets in the way, but a seven year old may need CD explained.

The good bit, honestly, is how much sympathy the book has for the baby. Katie spends a whole afternoon unable to make herself understood by people who love her, and comes out of it noticeably kinder about Heather.

What to read next

If that one is a hit, Doggone It! does the same trick with Katie's own dog. Her strict teacher has moved in next door and wants every dog on the street kept on a lead, which is when the wind turns up again.