As the months pass during first-grade teacher Mrs. Neal's pregnancy, her class gets involved writing letters to the baby, thinking up possible names for it, and designing a baby room on the bulletin board.
Mildred Hubble, who has set out to keep her third year at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches disaster-free, feels compelled to investigate her weird new teacher.
All the Gaskitts have a bad day when the baby rolls away in a shopping cart, the twins' teacher acts peculiar, and a lost bird tries to hypnotize the cat.
A first grader is frightened on her first day of school after hearing a rumor that her teacher is a 300-year-old alien with a purple tongue who steals baby teeth from her students.
Ten-year-old Fred (short for Frederika) narrates the story of school and village life among the Athapascans in Alaska during 1948 when Miss Agnes arrived as the new teacher.
Elizabeth tries to tell her family that there is something wrong with her new teacher, but they cannot see it, even though Miss Turtledove has orange eyes, eats desks, and throws fruit at the students.
