Alligator Action

By Ali Sparkes and Ross Collins

Petty Potts has been kidnapped! Josh and Danny have to find her before it's too late. While investigating, the boys come across Petty's latest S.W.I.T.C.H. spray that can turn them into alligators. Josh and Danny soon have a date with destiny…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781467740302

Ali Sparkes

Before she became an author, Ali worked as a singer, journalist, magazine editor, assistant to a juggling unicyclist, and comedy columnist on BBC Radio. Ali describes herself as, at heart, an 11-year-old boy, and as a child spent a lot of time building forts, climbing trees, and digging up stuff. 

Book preview

9-1-1. Which service do you require?

Police! Ambulance! Fire and Rescue . . . all of them! Danny said.

What is the nature of your emergency?

This old lady we know has vanished, and we think she’s been kidnapped—or killed—or . . . or both!

What is your name and address, caller?

Eerrrm, Danny said. Well . . . it’s kind of secret!

Is this a prank call?

NO! It’s just that . . . she’s a genius scientist who can S.W.I.T.C.H. humans into spiders and frogs and snakes, and we’re her assistants, and we have to keep it secret . . . and . . .

Young man, prank calls put other people’s lives at risk! If we hear from this number again, there will be trouble. I’m hanging up now.

CLICK. Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

That went well, then, Josh said, who had heard it all on speakerphone. I told you it’d be no good! Nobody is going to believe us!

Danny slumped down in the hallway and hung up the phone with a sigh. Josh was right. How could they ever explain what was really happening? Nobody would believe the truth—that their next-door neighbor was not just a slightly dotty old lady but, in fact, a genius scientist who had developed an amazing S.W.I.T.C.H. spray that could turn people into creepy-crawlies and amphibians and reptiles. He and Josh knew it was true—because they were the people Petty had S.W.I.T.C.H.ed. More times than they could count.

Come on, Josh said, peering at the computer print-out in his hand. Let’s go down to the den. We need to think.

They walked out to the garden and found their way into the rhododendron bush. Piddle, their pet terrier, ran in behind them and sat between Josh and Danny, wagging his tail energetically, hoping for a ball game.

Danny took the computer printout from his brother and anxiously scratched his spiky blond hair as he read Petty Potts’s last diary entry.

When it looked as if Petty still hadn’t come back to her house after three days in a row, he and Josh had gotten so worried that they’d gone to check in the parking lot at Princessland—the girls’ toys and frocks superstore over which Petty rented an attic—the location of her new secret laboratory. They had spotted Petty’s old station wagon there. So they’d crept through Princessland to the lobby at the back and used the only S.W.I.T.C.H. spray they had—GeckoSWITCH. They had shrunk down to agile lizards and crawled through a gap under the locked door that led to Petty’s lab.

In the lab, as soon as they’d S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back to boys again, they could see signs of a struggle . . . and Petty’s diary entry still on her computer! She had been speaking her diary into a microphone—using a special program to convert her voice into words on-screen. It was the very last bit which had horrified Josh and Danny.

. . . my S.W.I.T.C.H. formula saved a life today! Josh, Danny, and Charlie ended up .W.I.T.C.H.ing into green anacondas to rescue one of the girls from Charlie’s school after she fell into the river.

But all of this pales into insignificance against more Mystery Marble Sender news. We found another marble at the zoo! And there’s something about Mystery Marble Sender’s note . . . the list of shopping errands on the end . . . that has tickled my memory. The yellow jacket—it’s something to do with a yellow jacket. And warts. . . I can almost see someone wearing a yellow jacket and tackling their fungal feet . . . but