Upside-Down Magic

My daughter has read all the books available in this series so far. She came to me not too long ago and said I should read it. I figured, why not?

Nory is a ten-year-old girl with a special gift: she can turn in to animals. The problem is, she always turns into wonky animals, a skunk with an elephant trunk or a beaver with a kitten body. On top of the wonky animals, she loses her human mind and ends up destroying things as the animal. Her father is the headmaster of the prestigious Sage Academy, and it has come time for her to sit for The Big Test, for admission to his school. All she has to do is turn in to a black kitten and keep her human mind while she's doing it. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen, and she is forced to go to a public magic school, Dunwiddle Magic School. Even worse, her father sends her to live with her aunt, without telling her. Her father is pretty much absentee, since her mother passed, and her older brother is doing much of the fatherly duties around the house.

At the new school, she is placed in a new class for people like her, who do "wonky magic", called the Upside-Down Magic class. Within this world there are 5 schools of magic:

1) Fluxers-transform into animals

2)Flares- light things on fire

3) Flyers-can fly and can, rarely, take passengers

4)Fuzzies-who can do animal magic

5)Flickers-can make objects or even themselves invisible

Nory meets another "wonky" kid, Elliot, who instead of lighting things on fire, freezes things. They, with several other kids, make up Ms. Starrs class of upside-down magic kids. She teaches them that they aren't wonky, they're just different and its her job to teach them how to use the magic they have and to not be ashamed that their magic isn't "normal."

I really thought this book was cute and I'm glad my daughter asked me to read it. We have 7 of the books, so Ill add this series to my stack to read for the year. The chapters are short, and it was a quick read, only took a few hours. The theme that I gleaned from this book is that it's okay to be different and you should learn to accept those differences and, in some cases, even hone what skills you have that make you different.