posted on 22 Apr 2024

Skylar and the K-Pop Headteacher by Luan Goldie

This unusual story has a captivating front cover showing a happy young girl and elderly grey haired woman dancing together. With the promise of ‘a hilarious body swap adventure’, who would not be intrigued to read on?

Skylar is an eleven year old who wearily tolerates her elder brother and the ‘boring’ adults in her household: a dad who is only interested in his plants, a mom who has her own sewing business and needs lots of help from Skylar to fulfil her orders, and a nanna who only wants to cook with her and to talk about her childhood memories. She prefers to spend time in the world of K-Pop following her favourite Korean band AZ8 with her friend Dana.

This means checking out all their posts on social media, buying all their merchandise, talking about her favourite beautiful band member, Woojin, and waiting with bated breath for any new video launches. In other words she is an enthralled fan, a ‘Glow’ who really doesn’t have time for much else, especially school. When she oversteps the mark with what her parents regard as an unhealthy ‘obsession’, AZ8 is banned for one week which means she will miss the launch of the new video that evening.

She is furious with her punishment and when Ms Callus, her very strict headteacher confiscates her light up bunny ears hat which she has managed to smuggle to school, Skylar decides to object to the injustice and demands its return. Her anger at being bossed around by grown-ups is matched by Ms Callus’s rage at her insubordination and this creates a strange charge of energy that causes them to temporarily swop bodies! This is obviously very inconvenient for both of them but they seem to be philosophical about it and Skylar sees an opportunity to break the ban so that she can at least watch the video.

When the two friends watch the video on a TV in the basement of the house where Ms Callus lives, they are thrilled to find out about the launch of a dance competition with prizes of free tickets to the sold out AZ8 London show. But how will they ever be able to win?

This lively story explores how the two characters learn about one another as a result of the body swop. Some of the experiences are very pleasing as Sklyar relishes the power to order other children about at school and to venture into the staffroom. Here she finds out that the German teacher is also a K-Pop fan of the all Korean all-girl supergroup, White Teeth!

Once he plays some of their music all the staff are inspired to try a dance routine together, encouraged by their surprisingly keen Headteacher who seems to have undergone a mysterious change of personality. Meanwhile Ms Callus is enjoying life with Skylar’s family and treating the swop as a sort of holiday on ‘the island of youth’.

Things get very complicated when there are problems about swopping back the bodies. The novelty has definitely worn off and, most importantly - how will Skylar get to enter the dance competition in time? Fortunately they realise that AZ8 prides itself on ‘Music for Everyone’ and is very inclusive. I won’t spoil what happens next although readers might be able to speculate.

I recommend this very funny book with likeable young characters who are determined to make the most of their lives and who reluctantly learn to appreciate that the grown up world is not all bad. I can imagine that many readers will enjoy speculating about a similar temporary body swop.

Published by Walker Books, you can get your copy from your local independent bookshop - who will be happy to order it for you if they don’t have copies on the shelf.

 

Karen Argent

April 2024