Eight year old, Danny and Josh are twins. Danny and Josh have crawled under their backyard fence to retrieve their dog Piddle from Miss Potts. Piddle is inside a secret lab in the back of Miss Pott’s shed. As they leave the lab/ shed, Josh and Danny are sprayed with a yellow liquid. They go to wash it off , but they begin to shrink in the bathtub. Then, the twins turn into spiders. Their sister chases them down the bathtub drain and turns on the water. Now in the sewer, Josh and Danny meet up with two rats, Scratch and Sniff.  Scratch and Sniff are the ones who help Josh and Danny understand what has been happening to them because Miss Potts is a “mad scientist.”  Scratch and Sniff explain S.W.I.T.C.H.* stands for Serum Which Instigates Total Cellular Hijacks. One of the previous altered insects eventually changed back to its original form, but most get eaten before that happens. THEN, Josh is stuck to a long pink tongue. Josh escapes from the toad’s tongue and from a bird , before the twins get caught by Miss Potts in a jar. Miss Potts gladly changes them back into boys because she wants to know what it is like to be a spider. Josh and Danny want nothing to do with her.

Books 2-6 continue with Danny and Josh morphing into different critters: bluebottle houseflies, grasshoppers, ants, crane flies, and beetles.

*The back cover has the “I” in S.W.I.T.C.H. standing for ‘Initiates’.

P. 86, line 12- has an error in word order.(And don’t you ever come over our to side!)

Ross Collins artwork reminds me of that done in the original HOMER PRICE.

Includes web sites for National Geographic Kids and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.