Jeremy Strong’s Pirate Pandemonium is a properly funny school story for 8 year olds about a supply teacher who turns up at the gates in an ambulance.<\/p>\n
Violet Pandemonium has had no work for weeks. She has taken up pottery instead and bought half a ton of clay, which is currently sitting in her bath because there was nowhere else to put it.<\/p>\n
Her first go on the potter’s wheel throws a lump of clay out of the window and onto a passing cyclist’s head. She never finds out.<\/p>\n
Then the phone rings. Witts End Primary needs someone for Class Five, right now. She stuffs her bits and bobs into a holdall, climbs into her second hand ambulance and drives there with the siren going.<\/p>\n
The roads clear beautifully. Even the police wave her through.<\/p>\n
Class Five is the class nobody can hold. When she walks in, Samantha Boggis is throwing Gary out of the window for the fifth time that morning and a group at the back are running a wrestling competition.<\/p>\n
Miss Pandemonium says good morning, is completely ignored, and quietly gets out a portable cooker and an empty tin can.<\/p>\n
What she does with them is the best scene in the book, and it works because she never explains a thing until somebody asks. By the time the can crumples flat on the floor, every child in the room is watching her.<\/p>\n
Then there is the deputy head. Mrs Earwigger has a beehive, vulture glasses, and the power to decide what every class in the school will be doing. When she is lost for words her mouth sucks itself inwards until it vanishes.<\/p>\n
Gary reckons that is air pressure too.<\/p>\n
It is Book Week, and Mrs Earwigger has decreed that Class Five will be Flower Fairies. Class Five would rather not.<\/p>\n
What they become instead, after an argument about whether girls can be pirate captains that turns into a ruler battle across the classroom, is a crew. With Miss Pandemonium up on her desk waving a metre ruler and calling it the quarterdeck.<\/p>\n
If you have ever wanted a book where the grown up is properly, gleefully on the children’s side, this is it. She never tells them off. She just makes the rules stop applying.<\/p>\n
Two things worth mentioning. The window throwing is played as a joke and nobody is hurt by it. And the boys say some fairly dismissive things about girls, which is clearly set up so that Samantha can flatten them.<\/p>\n
For another class and another teacher who is not at all what the school ordered, try Mr Majeika and the School Book Week. Mr Majeika used to be a wizard and still slips occasionally, and his school has just been landed with a games teacher who keeps her face wrapped in a scarf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jeremy Strong’s Pirate Pandemonium is a properly funny school story for 8 year olds about a supply teacher who turns up at the gates in an ambulance. Violet Pandemonium has had no work for weeks. She has taken up pottery instead and bought half a ton of clay, which is currently sitting in her bath […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":10977,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":8140,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Mr Majeika and the School Book Week","lr_seo_hook":"A supply teacher turns up in an ambulance and makes her class into pirates."},"book_tag":[23],"age_group":[26],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[463],"class_list":["post-8407","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-funny-books","age_group-books-for-8-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-jeremy-strong"],"yoast_title":"Pirate Pandemonium by Jeremy Strong | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A supply teacher turns up in an ambulance and makes her class into pirates. For ages 8+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n