NNtG: Graveyard School #08: Let's Scare the Teacher to Death!

It's been a while since we covered anything Graveyard School. A series that I've mostly enjoyed but haven't quite found the book I loved yet. We've covered headless bike riders, skateboarding skeletons and possible cannibal lunch ladies. Maybe what's been missing is possible murder? In this case we have a tale of a petrified teacher who is about to be REALLY petrified. As in stone cold dead. At least that's what the title is suggesting, and titles have NEVER overexaggerated before, right? Let's see if this book can get away with murder. Let's Scare the Teacher to Death! (also known as the less exciting Terrify the Teacher in the UK)

I love this cover. It feels very Jacobus in the warping and point of view, though it's not actually a Tim work, so props to Barry Jackson. What makes it work is the very obvious reference to The Wizard of Oz with the Wicked Witch of the East being crushed under Dorothy's house. With the curled shoes I guess selling the idea that this teacher is really old and witchy. Rocks the striped stockings though I will say. And I have to assume this was an awakening cover for some soon-to-be foot fetishist, so I guess that's either less points or more points in the cover's favor, depending on your point of view. 

Ms. Cheevy is a coward. And, more importantly, a pretty bad math teacher. She jumps at every sound and is very paranoid. Given we open the book with Bentley "Bent" Jeste pulling a prank on her by jumping out of a door (only to then get the door smacked into his stomach), it's really not hard to see why Ms. Cheevy's so nervous. See, Bent really loves to pull pranks on everyone, including Polly Hannah, who warns him that eventually his would-be Bart Simpson routine is going to get him in trouble with Dr. Morthouse, the principal. Bent brags that he'll never get caught, which is bad to do when Morthouse is right behind him. But before she can fully catch Bent, she's distracted by a fight in the boy's bathroom. Our other protagonist, Jordie Flanders, is also annoyed by Ms. Cheevy, but mainly due to her giving them the same math assignments or just being bad at math as mentioned previously. 

While Jordie would rather be studying, her mom sends her outside to get some fresh air. She runs into Algie Greene, who we met in The Headless Bicycle Rider, still doing his paper route. They talk a bit about Bent and how immature he is. Which is good timing as after Algie leaves, Bent shows up claiming his bike is out of control, to which Jordie tricks him by saying he hurt her ankle, causing him to topple off his bike. This newfound power of japing people, namely Bent, is enough to finally get Jordie to think less about math equations and more about having fun. The next morning Bent and Jordie both sneak into Ms. Cheevy's classroom, both now more eager to prank their teacher. This comes later that day as while Ms. Cheevy is again doing math poorly (especially for Jordie since all she cares about is proper math. To the point that if it's revealed she's a robot it wouldn't shock me), Bent suddenly falls over his desk and starts to bleed. Jordie then slips on the red liquid and falls. This prank achieved its goal of scaring Ms. Cheevy, but the other kids later note that maybe this was one prank too many and that Ms. Cheevy's more angry than she looks.

The next day, Ms. Cheevy arrives at school, looking more flustered and freaked out. Even Dr. Morthouse and Mr. Lucre both note that she seems to be angrier than she usually is. But she presses on and heads to class where, of course, Bent and Jordie have planned another prank. But Ms. Cheevy gives everyone, especially math wiz Jordie, F's on their tests, and snaps at them when they try to protest. Everyone blames Bent for it on account of the constant pranks. That the pranks have finally snapped Ms. Cheevy, who is far from ready to forgive. The other kids think Bent should apologize, but he's too stubborn to consider it. But Jordie comes with him so that he'll at least have some confidence in doing it. They apologize to Ms. Cheevy, even making claim that she's their favorite teacher in hopes of her letting them off easy. She instead gives them 26 pages of homework. So now Bent is pretty much unwilling to forgive Ms. Cheevy and thinks that if she's coming after them then this means war. Later that night, Jordie heads over to Bent's house and tells him that she too wants to settle Ms. Cheevy's hash and that they should join forces for a prank she'll never forget.

The next day at class, Ms. Cheevy is once again giving everyone long assignments when she opens her desk, only for a spider to pop out and cling to her face. Of course, this just angers her more and hasn't scared her to death like the title has suggested. We get a look at Ms. Cheevy's apartment where that night she decides to give Polly an A and the other kids F's to continue to drive them even more insane. So now the kids are still screwed and need to find a way to get back at Cheevy once and for all. This means having the students act more normal and polite for a while, having one of them keep Cheevy in class late into the evening, then when she leaves, they have Polly dress up as a ghost to scare her. Polly is against this, which everyone worries means she'll rat out on them given she's such a teacher's pet.

But she ultimately agrees to do it. They enact their plan a week later, scaring Ms. Cheevy so bad that she collapses to the floor and isn't moving. So if they planned to scare her to actual death, mission accomplished. Except Bent tells Polly that this wasn't actually Ms. Cheevy that she had scared, but Jordie in disguise to prank Polly. Only Jordie shows up dressed as Ms. Cheevy, which means that oh, that's the actual teacher they just killed. Polly runs off since she doesn't want to be an accessory to murder. As Bent and Jordie try to understand what happened, a man shows up and notes Cheevy being on the ground pretending to be dead. When Dr. Morthouse shows up, he seems really nervous and runs off. But now that Dr. Morthouse is here and there's a body on the floor, the kids are pretty much screwed. So they confess to killing their teacher by accident. 

Suddenly, Ms. Cheevy rises up and we learn that this isn't Ms. Cheevy, or even a Ms. It's a man named Mr. Chalmers. Oh god, is THAT why the book mentions Ms. Cheevy's Adam's apple so much? I wasn't going to cover it thinking this wasn't going to be the swerve, but I guess I have to. Mr. Chalmers is a freelance photographer turned government spy. His cover was blown and he's since had to change identities over the years. Morthouse knew of this and gave him the job of math teacher under the alias of Ms. Cheevy, which explains why that math class was terrible. The man who showed up was Mr. Smith, an old business rival. Seeing Chalmers' body on the floor, he thinks that means that Chalmers is dead and is no longer on his trail. But now that his cover's blown, he's going to have to go somewhere else and don a new alias. The next day Bent and Jordie tell the other kids that Ms. Cheevy just up and left town. This leaves Bent and Jordie wondering if Mr. Chalmers was a spy, if Mr. Smith was really after him, and most importantly, if this wasn't a big plan by Dr. Morthouse to scare the kids to death. 

This book is just okay, but I think it's a prime example of bad pacing. Because we take over half the book to build to this ending and then it hits at breakneck speed to the point that so little of it lands. Hell, the Mr. Smith stuff is so blink and you'll miss it that it does feel like "Tom B. Stone" Nola Thacker came up with the swerve at the last minute. Maybe not so much that Ms. Cheevy was a spy the whole time, but maybe more having her be a he. And before you ask, no I don't look at this as transphobic or as problematic as it could have been. That despite Chalmers pretending to be a female math teacher, the book really never harps on it to the point where it feels like Cheevy is who Chalmers feels he actually is. A slight mention about not wanting to wear anything petite, but that's also not substantial enough. And, aside from the heavy focus on the adams apple, his big feet and a couple mentions of his wig slipping, the book doesn't harp on the idea of "lol, man dressed as woman" so it gets a pass from me. Not a defense of it because it is still perpetuating harmful stereotypes, but I have seen far worse takes on this swerve that this feels as kid gloves to the point of not as concerning as it could be. Which is good because when we got to the twist I was actually nervous.

As for the cast, they're fine. Bent is a prankster who doesn't know when to quit. And even this case of almost killing a teacher with his constant pranking doesn't seem to have scared him straight. Jordie is interesting. The book writes her to be a super genius with math, but also someone who always talks more scientifically and more literate than the others. To the point that if the book suddenly revealed she was some kind of Data-like robot, I wouldn't have been shocked. The rest of the cast are characters we've seen before like Park and Algie and Jaws and Polly who gets a bit more focus here, but is mainly here to be the one who almost scares their teacher to death. Cheevy/Chalmers is here to be the antagonist and plays that job well enough. But the character I'm most interested coming out of this is Dr. Morthouse. I haven't read some of the books before this one, but this feels like what I've been saying about Graveyard School from the beginning. We're introducing these characters like Lucre, Morthouse and Basement Bart, but doing really nothing with them aside from having them be creepy. Here, the book makes Morthouse feel like enough of a threat, and her involvement in keeping Chalmers' alias alive does give her the most actual focus for once. Not enough to really play into how monstrous she could be aside from a silver fang she may or may not have, but enough.

So, I still haven't found the first Graveyard School book I really liked so far. Honestly, this might be the weakest structurally of the four I've covered. It's not a particularly scary book and it takes over half the book to get to anything interesting, which it then has to rush so much out the gate to really leave you satisfied. And while I fully don't consider the twist of Cheevy/Chalmers to be as problematic as it could have been, I can definitely see why anyone else could come to this conclusion. All I'm saying is that, in another author's hands this could have been a much, MUCH worse scenario. I'll give this one a light recommend at the very least. My search for a Graveyard School book I can call amazing goes on I guess. Let's Scare the Teacher to Death! gets a C+.