Monday, August 6, 2007

Topsy-Turvy Tracy: The Upside-Downer Day

Topsy-Turvy Tracy: The Upside-Downer Day was written by Susie Taylor, a kindergarten teacher with a background in development psychology.

Told through rhyming verse, the story follows Tracy, a young girl who loves to explore God's world. On morning she tumbles out of bed upside down. Lying on the floor she sees that things look quite different with her head down low. She decides to have an upside-downer day. She walks on her hands and eats breakfast with her feet in the air. Then she goes to the playground to see what she can see hanging upside down from the monkey-bars. Everything looks different! It's not long before she gets dizzy. Then she realizes there's not much she can do upside down. She can't ride her bike or jump rope. Tracy concludes that God designed us to be rightside-up and His way is best.

Illustrated by Tammie Lyon, the pages are filled with simple drawings, friendly characters and plenty of bright colors. Several pages encourage readers to "Flip and see what Tracy saw!"

What I Like: The illustrations are sweet, and the character of Tracy is adorable, reminiscent of Punky Brewster. My daughter loves flipping the book upside down to see things the way Tracy does. It's a cute, simple novelty.

What I Dislike: It's very simplistic and very short. I like kids concluding that God's way is best, but to think He made us rightside-up just so we could play hopscotch is pretty weak.

Overall Rating: Good.

Age Appeal: 4-8, though my 3-year-old loves it, too.

Publisher Info: ZonderKidz, 2004; ISBN: 0310704421; Hardback; $12.99

Buy it Now at Amazon for $11.04



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great site! I've got to look around and see what you've reviewed. We are short a few books for Home School this year :-) Any particularly good recommendations would be appreciated (by email). Thanks!

Kristina said...

Glad you like the blog! To see our highest rated books, scroll down to "Categories" on the right hand side of the blog and click on "Top Picks."