Pond Magic by Angela Sunde
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