Toots and the Upside-Down House (The Toots Books) - Softcover

Carol Hughes grew up in England in a seaside town where her parents kept a small hotel. As a child, she loved standing on her head and wondering what it would be like to walk on the ceiling. When she got older, she went to Brighton College of Art to study painting, but she filled her sketchbooks with notes and stories instead of drawings. Not long afterward, she moved to the United States and began writing. She now lives right-side-up in San Francisco with her husband.

Grade 3-5. Upset at her father for ignoring her after the death of her mother, Toots discovers an upside-down world in her ceiling. Whisked there by a Olive, a fat, cobweb-wielding house fairy, she becomes instrumental in helping the fairies defeat the evil Jack Frost, the sprites, and the house goblins. A labored plot, superficially developed secondary characters, and a confusion of rules that govern the gravity-defying ceiling world make this a difficult read for all but the most committed fantasy readers. A subplot involving a lost stuffed bear given to Toots by her mother and returned by her now-attentive father at the story's end. Murky black-and-white drawings done by a three-person consortium do little to save this overwrought offering. Stick with books about the Littles by John Peterson, the Borrowers by Mary Norton, and the Mennyms by Sylvia Waugh.?Susan Hepler, Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA
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