My Upside Down World

“This is a TRUE story. It’s about my world” There’s smoke in the kitchen. Dad acts normal but Mom is worried her head might explode. Even so, the biggest problem is global. You-Know-Who has been at it again and the world must be put right. Today! Yes, Big brothers are mean. Big brothers spell trouble. And Big Brothers are not to be trusted, especially if they turn your world upside down. Or is it downside up? In this book where the parallel crazy worlds with their upside-downness and downside-upness weave a fantastic, troubled, creased co-existence, both exasperating and reassuring. Nothing is what it seems like and everything is up for wonder. Read it as a quirky story of squabbling siblings or of something more global, more sinister; each page leaves us peeling multiple layers, especially in a world turned upside down by the pandemic, where the family has come out to be the focal point of our home-bound existence, frustrating for some, reassuring for the others, or both for most. Ken Spillman adroitly plays around with words and situations both believable and unbelievable, while Silvana Giraldo spins a splendidly broken-but-beautiful world to bring alive a somewhat Orwellian dystopia into this picture book.