All Change

Seven-year-old Ben loves his teacher, Mrs Peacock. She lets the children eat their fruit in the playground, and go out to play early if they are good (admittedly not very often). But, best of all, she tells the most fantastic stories about magic conkers and carrots with legs. And the toys in the classroom come to life at night. Ben knows this is true as, each morning, Mrs Peacock shows the children the rubbish the toys have left behind.When Mrs Peacock starts to act rather strangely, Ben and his friends wonder what’s going to happen next. They can’t understand why they have to take their swimming things in for the second time that week, when they have been to the pool two days before. Ben’s mum already thinks that Mrs Peacock is a barmy old bat, and this latest instruction seems to confirm her suspicions.Mrs Peacock might seem barmy, but she is so fed up with a noisy class that she is willing to try anything to keep them quiet. She has noticed that the only time the children aren’t noisy is when they go for their swimming lessons, so she hatches a desperate plan to improve her life in school. A plan that involves a hosepipe, an open skylight, twenty-five children and an awful lot of water.