Black Lagoon (also known as Teachers from the Black Lagoon) is a children's book series by Mike Thaler. It focuses on a boy named Hubie, who imagines each of his teachers to be terrifying monsters, only to learn that they're actually perfectly nice people.
Provides examples of the following tropes:
- Aesop Amnesia: Each book reveals that Hubie's teacher is perfectly normal, but Hubie never learns his lesson in between books.
- Ambiguous Situation: Presumably, Hubie's teachers are normal people and he's just imagining things. However, he also claims to have actually seen horrible things happen to his classmates, such as one boy who came back from the nurse with all his teeth missing, which makes it ambiguous if he's really making it all up.
- Black Comedy: Hubie's fantasies about his teachers portray them as so over the top terrifying that it warps back around to being funny.
- Disproportionate Retribution: You're laminated if you talk in the library.
- Drives Like Crazy: The bus driver, T. Rex Fenderbender, who drives like he's in the Indy 500.
- Evil Teacher: What Hubie imagines each of his teachers is like, based on rumors he's heard from his classmates.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Mrs. Green bites a student in half while giving a lesson. "This is a whole boy. This is half a boy. Now you've had fractions."
- Long List: T. Rex Fenderbender has a lengthy list of everything he doesn't allow on the bus, such as inhaling and exhaling.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Miss Hearse the nurse.
- Never Live It Down: Invoked. Hubie fears getting sent to the principal's office could come back to haunt him if he runs for president.
- Shout-Out: The cafeteria lady is said to drive "The Magic Ghoul Bus."
- Skewed Priorities: Of all the horrors that Mr. Green is said to inflict on his gym class, Hubie thinks square dancing with the girls is the worst part.
