The book I read was Upside-Down Magic, Sticks & Stones by Sarah Mlynowski. The book takes place in modern times. The main characters are Bax and Nory. In the book, everybody has a magic power. You can only have one power and there are only a few different powers. Flyers can fly, fuzzies can speak to animals, fluxers can change into different animals and there are a few other magic powers that I forgot. Nory and Bax are fluxers. But there’s something wrong with their magic. Nory can make a mix of two animals and Bax can only flux into a rock (but once a leash but that’s a whole different story). That’s what you would call UDM, upside-down magic. But UDM isn’t just for fluxers. It can be for anybody. So the UDM kids take different classes than the normal kids. One day (going to the book) there were rocks all over the ground in Nory and Bax’s school. Everybody was tripping all over the place. And there’s also a pennies for potions jar to help hospitals get better potions. That day, there were no pennies in the jar even though the day before there were pennies in the jar. Everybody knew the pennies were turned into rocks. There was this one mean girl whose name was Lacey Clench who blamed the UDM kids for doing this so she made a petition to get rid of the UDM kids. Does the petition work out for Lacey Clench or not.

I’m going to describe Bax in three adjectives. He’s quiet. He gets tutored with Nory for fluxing but he says nothing so the tutor only pays attention to Nory. He’s mysterious. When everybody was trying to figure out who turned the pennies to stone, everybody glared at him because of his rock magic. He’s personal. He doesn’t share anything about what’s happening in his life or his feelings. Like when his dad told him that he (the dad) got fired, he (Bax) didn’t tell anybody.

An interesting part of the book is that people talk about other people even though they don’t know that that person is listening. Another interesting part is that the book gives all of the mystery away but you still can’t figure out what’s happening. Lacey Clench said, “If I get fifty signatures, the UDM kids get kicked out.” That means Lacey Clench is mean because if you’re a student, it doesn’t mean you can kick other students out of school.

I liked Upside-down magic. I liked it because it was mystery and I love mystery. The book is filled with mystery. Page by page, something mysterious has happened. There’s also a bunch of magic. That’s why the book is called Upside-Down Magic  It’s a mystery book because something bad happened and people need to find out who did the bad thing. The book for me is really unique, but if you read it, you’ll be able to make a connection with another book or with a movie. I rate this book four 1/2 out of five stars.