Ice in Summer

Twelve Kinds of Ice by Ellen Bryan Obed, with scattered illustrations by Barbara McClintock is a slim little book that caught my eye on the new book shelf.  Reading about ice and winter seemed like a wonderful antidote to hot summer days, so I checked it out.  Longer than a picture book, shorter than a chapter book, I’m not sure what to call this, but I thought it would be nice for reading aloud, and it was.  We read it in two installments.  It begins by describing the first ice that appears in late fall-the thin ice on top of a bucket that easily breaks.  Successive ices are described with a building anticipation and excitement. It’s funny because as the reader your excitement builds along with the children in the story even though you don’t know exactly what they are excited for, though we assume it is for ice skating.  But not just ice skating! Oh, no.  This family lives in a climate where once it gets cold enough it stays cold enough all winter to have an ice rink in their yard.  They skate every day and the winter culminates with an ice show.  It all felt very Canadian, though the author is from Maine, so I guess that’s where this is (since it seems to be her childhood.)  I loved this and the kids liked it too.  We’ve always wanted to have a skating rink in our yard but our winters are not consistently cold enough.  It was fun to enjoy imagining it through this book.

I’m delighted to say that this next book my son gave me to read after he had read it himself, telling me how good it was.  The Sleepwalkers by Viviane Schwarz is a graphic novel about a group of animals that rescue children in nightmares.  A child with nightmares puts a letter under his or her pillow, they receive it, and then they enter the nightmare to save the child by bringing it to their safe house.  The three Sleepwalkers seem to be getting ready for some sort of change, as they each create a new apprentice.  The big bear is first, and he is very nervous about his ability to help children.  There is adventure in how they rescue all the children, but there’s also a bittersweetness to the story as the responsibility is passed to the newcomers and the old ones must leave.