1in tim ranch's novel, a young fruit-bat is fascinated by children playing in a backyard. while upside down, the creature barely makes out images of swinging sticks and rolling balls in a host of colors and running humans. it is children enjoying a croquet set straight from the "fairest of three-dollar garage sales." the bat, of course, has very poor eyesight, but it is the bat's imagination-not just its vision and position-that propel the story. the bat imagines happy, laughter-filled backyard scenes. descriptions presented by this bat only add to the appeal of tim ranch’s latest novel, sleeping upside-down. 2the human characters in the novel are just as captivating. the main human character, kate waterbee, is a typical thirteen-year-old. she is secretly angry with her parents because they have no decent excuse for forbidding her from getting a pet. kate believes that “allergies would have at least evoked some sympathy. but her parents’ noses and eyes could handle a dog or a kitty. it is their worried minds that fear an animal whining at them all the time.” while with their mellow daughter, kate’s parents fear adopting a needy, demanding pet could alter that attribute. 3curiously, the backyard bat becomes a perfect pet. kate makes a bat box for it on the side of the tree. her “sometimes-pet” as she calls it, starts to think highly of kate and her family. the chapters from the bat’s point of view are especially interesting. the bat imagines kate’s days down to the smallest detail. 4ranch’s usual streak of silliness shown in his earlier novels takes a back seat in sleeping upside-down. while the situations in the novel are very funny, the characters seem ordinary and sincere in their reactions. during rainstorms, for instance, the shift key on kate’s keyboard becomes stuck. her initial attempts to e-mail a cute boy in her class seem even more uncomfortable with the added emphasis: “would you get ice cream with me tomorrow? i am not yelling.” ranch adds a hint of his strange humor to many of kate’s everyday actions. 5accepting a backyard bat as a character may be abnormal for readers at first, but by the end of the novel, the stories of kate and the bat blend together very well. the addition of the bat avoids this work from being labelled as merely charmingly predictable teen fiction. the story does not develop into a children’s tale of speaking animals. it instead shows two points of view on kate’s life. though the idea of chapters switching viewpoints seems dizzying, it is no more severe than the sway of a backyard swing. 6ranch’s novel presents characterization through kate’s interactions with her parents and with the bat. the bat wants to belong to kate’s family just as she is trying to break from the comforts of home and make new friends. like the bat in the backyard tree, ranch maintains enough distance from his characters to avoid interfering with too many details. ranch’s writing style suggests his own great love of people-watching. without being too sweet or dramatic, sleeping upside-down is a wonderful story worth exploring. read the passage on the left to answer the following questions: 1) based on paragraph 5 of the book review, from what point of view is the book told? a) it is told from the narrator's point of view. b) it is told from the bat's point of view. c) it is told from kate's point of view. d) it is told from both kate's and the bat's point of view. eliminate