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MISS SWITCH ONLINE by Barbara Brooks Wallace

MISS SWITCH ONLINE

by Barbara Brooks Wallace

Pub Date: June 1st, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-84376-3
Publisher: Atheneum

Wallace is just treading water in this roughed-out reprise of The Trouble with Miss Switch (1971) and Miss Switch to the Rescue (1981). Once again, evil witch Saturna has nefarious plans for science whiz Rupert P. Brown and his Pepperdine Elementary classmates. This time she places her vacuous but supernally handsome brother Grodark and Neptuna, another witch, into the Principal’s office—but, as usual, irascible rival Sabbatina Switch is on the case, and the baddies find all of their spells fizzling as soon as cast. Shoehorning computers and email into the tale without much understanding of how they actually work, the author concocts a series of situations involving talking pets, midnight classroom meetings, obscure clues in bad verse and quick, thousand-mile broom rides. But even readers willing to enjoy these crowd-pleasing elements without minding their contrivance are likely to be disappointed to see Rupert and friends doing little here beyond watching from the sidelines, worrying, and being briefly victimized by harmlessly prankish spells. A clumsy updating. (Fiction. 9-11)