Pond Magic by Angela Sunde

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Puffin, 2010. ISBN 978 014330525.
(Ages: 10-12) Recommended. Another in the highly successful series, Aussie Chomps, this very funny story has poor Lily watching herself turn into a frog. At first she notices her skin is going green, then she embarrasses herself highly in the school bus with the most enormous burps, when changing for swimming, she suddenly notices the webbing between her feet, and to top it all off, she wins the race easily, using the fastest breaststroke anyone has ever seen. Combine all this with eruption on her face and a proclivity for flies, Lily's life is a mess.
Her mother, Mrs Padd, surprises her with a French exchange student, coming to stay and Lily is determined not to like him. But he speaks French. So when Mrs Swan next door confesses that is it her doing that is causing these momentous changes, Lily finds something on the web in French, needing his discretion to translate it and so get her life back to some sort of normalcy.
A great read with lots of puns and jokes around frogs and green things, this deceptively uncomplicated writing will engage the Aussie Chomps audience, looking for something with bite, a sound plot and amiable characters and yet still not too complex or overlong.
Fran Knight

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