Staff Review: "Twelve Kinds of Ice" by Ellen Bryan Obed

 

If you’re looking for explosions, heart-stopping drama, or canny characterization, don’t read this book. If, however, you are in search of what I call “quiet books of wonder,” then you need to stop everything and soak in the simple beauty of “Twelve Kinds of Ice” by Ellen Bryan Obed. At 64 small pages, with detailed drawings by Barbara McClintock offsetting the text perfectly, it is just the right book to curl up with over a cup of hot cocoa and read to the whole family on a snow day.

This is a memoir of spending winter on the ice—from the first fragile shards in a bucket to the lovingly tended backyard ice-rink, ending with the muddy, slushy puddles of spring. Chronicling her childhood in Maine, Obed  writes with lightly sparkling prose leaning almost into poetry, expressing the wonder and joy of frozen lakes, late-night skates, and the delicious expectation of watching temperatures drop enough to freeze.

“We sped to silver speeds at which lungs and legs, clouds and sun, wind and cold, raced together. Our blades spit out silver.  Our lungs breathed out silver.  Our minds burst with silver while the winter sun danced silver down our bending backs.”(19)

Filled with the hush of wind over a frozen pond, the flash of sun bouncing off snow, and the joy of a warm, active body in the cold of winter, “Twelve Kinds of Ice” captures the wonder to be found in the frozen sleep of winter, and I recommend it to anyone at any age (however, School Library Journal recommends it for grades 3-6). Click on the link to reserve a copy today.

--Andrea W., H.Q.

P.S. For more quiet books of wonder, click on the titles below.