Girl can read upside down

0 Comments | Milwaukee Journal, The, Mar 7, 1995

SO, Megan Thomas is 8 actually 8 1/2 and she can read.

Great.

But she can read upside down.

No, not standing on her head. Sitting at a table, with the book facing a friend very often that's Mr. B so the other person can see the pictures.

Mr. B is Fred Bartelt, her principal at Milwaukee's Indian Community School. He has lots of kids come into his office to read to him, but Megan is the only one who turned the book so Mr. B could see the pictures. Then, she read the book. Upside down. She does it all the time.

Want to try it?

"In the shadows of the boxes, he thought he saw something move. Then he caught a glimpse of a pair of eyes staring at him slitlike and blood red. He swallowed hard and was about to say something when a small gray mouse shot out from behind some papers on the floor."

How did you do?

Megan reads upside down so the other person can look at the pictures. But she also was motivated by bats. Bats?

"Because like how bats sit upside down and all of a sudden they are eating," she said. "That's amazing they eat upside down and it all goes to the tummy."

Of course, Megan reads right side up, too. She's a good reader, said she learned to read at 3 1/2 and learned to read upside down when she was about 6.

Does she read a lot at home?

"You betcha," she said. She likes books about Franklin the turtle and chapter books "usually I read them to my little cousin."

"The reason I like Franklin books is all the time in Franklin books he has a problem," she said. And Franklin solves the problems by getting ideas from others. Not a bad approach.

Her plans for the future include riding a whale ("you hold onto the fin") and becoming "a ballet person."

Those are both done right side up.

By the way, that upside-down paragraph came from "The Tale of the Sinister Statues" (Minstrel Book, $3.99), a spin-off from Nickelodeon's "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" TV shows.

If you try watching TV upside down, stand on your head. It's less messy than trying to flip the TV over.