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I Didn't Order a Substitute: One Star, Would Not Order Again
Paperback
Series: I Didn't Order...
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 25 2026
Pages: 42
Weight: 0.27
Height: 0.11 Width: 8.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
He did NOT order a substitute.
But on a Tuesday the classroom door opened and the wrong teacher walked in. Ms. Reed was home with a cold. This one was called Ms. Pearl, and she was, in every measurable way, incorrect.
Wrong voice. Wrong sweater. Wrong marker smell. The morning songs? Calendar first, then weather - and everybody knows weather goes first. The dinosaur voice at story time? Much too squeaky. Dinosaurs are not squeaky. She called the class friends. Ms. Reed calls them crew. Lunch count took forever, and he had to point at his own name twice.
This was clearly a wrong delivery. So one very organized kid picks up a pencil and files a WRONG ITEM REPORT. ORDERED: one Ms. Reed. RECEIVED: one substitute. REQUEST: please send the correct teacher.
Ms. Pearl reads the whole thing. Slowly. She does not laugh once. Then she takes out a pen and writes along the bottom: YOUR TEACHER IS ON BACKORDER. EXPECTED MONDAY. A SUBSTITUTE HAS BEEN PROVIDED IN THE MEANTIME.
Hm. She speaks form.
By Thursday she knows every name in the class. Even the twins. Ms. Reed needed a whole month for the twins.
From the creator of I Didn't Order a Baby, I Didn't Order a Monster, I Didn't Order a Kiss, I Didn't Order Grandma, I Didn't Order a Hiccup, and I Didn't Order a Cat comes a seventh deadpan-funny story about a big feeling - this time, the stubborn ache of a day that will not run the way it is supposed to. It lets a kid put a grown-up through quality control, takes his paperwork completely seriously, and then hands him one more blank line for the review he never expected to write.
Perfect for:
- Kids ages 4-8 who like their whole week to run on schedule
- Teachers and substitutes who have been quietly evaluated by a very small inspector
- Back-to-school, new-classroom, and first-week-of-anything gifts
- Classroom read-alouds with one deadpan narrator and one extremely squeaky dinosaur
40 pages of warm, funny illustrations, one extremely official piece of paperwork, and a five-star review nobody saw coming.
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