Upside-Down Magic 2: Sticks and Stones
by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, & Emily Jenkins
Scholastic, 2016
193 Pages
Middle Grade (7-12 and up)
The second book in the Upside-Down Magic series meets or exceeds expectations for excitement, suspense, and fun, wonky characters! Written by a skilled trio of women authors, Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins, this story about coming to grips with being unusual is perfect for 8-10 year olds, especially if they are, like my pack of little ones, a little wonky themselves.
After fourth grade, in this otherwise realistic world, kids transfer from a regular school to a magically focused school. Though they still have to learn math and geography, kids also learn to properly develop skills as a Fluxxer (shape-changer), a Flare (fire-bender), a Flyer (levitation), a Flicker (who makes things invisible), or a Fuzzy (who can communicate with animals).
Nory’s father is the headmaster of the lauded private school Sage Academy, but she didn’t pass the test to get in. Her magic is strong and… unusual. She’s a fluxer, which means she can turn into animals, but it’s hard for her to control. Sometimes instead of a kitten she’ll turn into a dritten (a kitten with dragon wings that can breathe fire,) or a skunkephant. She struggles with keeping her human mind and not getting distracted and using her father’s desk as a scratching post.
Kids who have unusual quirks in their magic are defined as upside-down. (It’s impolite to call it wonky.) For instance, some of the kids in her class might make it rain inside, float to the ceiling, see sound waves, or freeze things instead of using fiery flare magic.
In the first Upside-Down Magic book, Nory’s father sends her away to live with her Aunt Margot and attend Dunwiddle School, which hosts one of the new UDM classes springing up around the nation. Nory feels isolated and betrayed, but the story doesn’t dwell on that. Determined to prove herself capable, Nory learns to control her magic enough to pass the kitten shape-shifting test and transfer into regular classes. But in the end, magic as powerful as hers needs special training to control, and Nory stays in the UDM class choosing friends who accept her and understand her.
At the beginning of Upside-Down Magic 2, this Special Education class is brought to the forefront as the kids with wonko magic take the blame for stone-related pranks in the Dunwiddle school. Is the uncontrollable chaos of the Upside-Down Magic class to blame, or is someone setting them up to take the fall?
One morning, all the students take a spill in the hallway because the floor is covered in small round stones. In the ensuing chaos Lacy Clench gets shrunk! Of course, she blames the the wonkos from UDM class. What will she do for revenge?
The mystery of the rocks grows when one day most of the kids lockers are turned to stone– textbooks, pencils and all! Of course Bax with his rock magic and the UDM kids are the prime suspects. All the other kids seem to agree with Lacy , and many sign a petition that she starts passing around to get the UDM class disbanded from Dunwiddle school forever. Even Principal Gonzales begins to question their innocence. It’s like the X-men for ‘tweens!
This universe has its own version of quidditch called tigerball, or kittenball for the younger kids, and the team Nory and Bax join demonstrates camaraderie, looking past people’s weaknesses in the face of a condemning school. But when the team starts to question the stone pranks, will Nory have to prove herself to them?
Nory’s kittenball coach, a health-food nut, wants her to be his ace with her dragon-winged kitten form (after all the other team has a six-toed cat who can really wallop that ball of string!) and he teaches her and Bax some new tips on controlling their magic. He shows them how to “protect their flame” like a match in the breeze, just as in the first book Nory and Elliott discovered how to create a “box of normal”.
With their UDM teacher’s headstands (to look at things from a different perspective, O’ captain, My captain) and trust exercises (yes, they still have to do interpretive dance!) we see all the students make progress with controlling their magic and working cooperatively and successfully with others.
The story carries the suspense of who is responsible for the rock pranks to the very end. Was it the 8th grade? Lacy’s revenge? Or was it really a UDM student?
The UDM class is diverse, both in magic and in the backgrounds of the students. They are racially diverse, (Nory is black, and Bax is Indian,) but that seems almost an afterthought in the narrative, seen in descriptions of the characters rather than in their personalities. What completely makes up for this is the book’s addressing situations too-often unexplored in middle-grade novels; for instance, that Bax’s dad is suffering from depression. The narrative reveals that everyone is fighting a struggle you know nothing about, and does so without being preachy.
With cute dragon-kittens, wrestling with wonko magic, forging friendships and overcoming school bullies, what’s not to love? So I asked my daughter and her friends what they didn’t like about Upside-Down Magic. There were a few aspects that my nine year old wasn’t happy with in the first book. (This is after the second time we read it.) The main character is rejected out-of-hand by her father and she has to go live with a relative because her magic isn’t good enough for his approval. That’s pretty harsh. Then Elliott is mercilessly teased by the bullying flares who call themselves The Sparkies, and our readers thought it would be better if the main characters hadn’t spent most of the first book trying to get out of the class the story was all about. None of these shortcomings were present in the second book, which has now been declared my daughter’s favorite.
You’ll love Nory’s half-animals like the squippy and the dritten, and flare Lacey Clench brings an evil worthy of Miss Gulch. We really enjoyed getting to know some of the other characters like Bax and Ms. Starr in more depth. At the very end we were delighted at the promise of a 3rd book in the series coming in September, called Upside-Down Magic 3: Showing Off ! We can’t wait!
