Upside-Down Magic

Upside-Down Magic by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle and Emily Jenkins is a magic-school story for 8 year olds about a girl whose spells come out wrong.

What happens

Nory Horace can turn herself into animals. That's her talent and it's a big one. The trouble is that she can't stop the animals mixing.

She sets out to be a black kitten and ends up half kitten, half beaver, gnawing her way through four of her father's books and the legs of his desk. A bitten, she calls it. There's also a snitten, and, memorably, a dritten, which has dragon wings and sets fire to a box of matches.

Her father is the headmaster of a very grand magic school and he'd rather not discuss any of this. So Nory sits the entrance exam, it goes spectacularly wrong, and she's packed off to live with her aunt and join a new class at the local school. The class for the wonky ones.

That's where the book really gets going, because her classmates are brilliant. Elliott flares and then accidentally freezes things solid. Andres floats, and has to be walked to school on a leash by his big sister. Sebastian sees sound waves and is genuinely baffled that anyone finds this odd.

Their teacher won't allow the word wonky. She says different, or upside down, and she keeps a spare cardigan in the cupboard because she came prepared.

It's very funny, and the transformations are written from the inside, so you get Girl-Nory shouting at Beaver-Nory to please stop chewing while Beaver-Nory carries on regardless. Your reader will be on the floor.

Underneath the jokes there's something quieter. Nory's mum died six years ago and nobody in the family talks about her, or about much else. Nory is sent away without being told she's going, and she decides it must be because they're all ashamed of her. That lands.

It's handled gently, but a child who worries about being the odd one out will feel every bit of it. Most of them, I suspect, will be rather glad to.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Sticks & Stones carries straight on, with Nory in her aunt's house, still turning into animals nobody can name, and this time asked very politely not to.