Twelve Kinds of Ice
*Starred Review* Everything about this small book is precise. Twenty short chapters introduce the different kinds of ice that take one family through the winter, while McClintock’s pen-and-ink drawings, subtle yet celebratory, capture ice in all its incarnations. The first ice, you see, is a skim so thin it breaks when the children touch it. Second ice is like glass. But third ice doesn’t break. The narrator and her sister hear it coming: “We lay in our beds, listening to the cold cracking the maple limbs in the yard.” Field ice arrives as a narrow strip. Then stream ice, when you can watch fish swim beneath the surface. Black ice is a little scarier, but it’s good for skating. After the first snowfall, skating can be done at home on garden ice, made by packing the snow and turning on the hose. So it goes throughout the winter, as the family garden becomes a neighborhood hockey rink. When it’s perfect, it’s time for a skating party. Finally, the ice is gone. Lost mittens and pucks appear. But dream ice still exists—and you can skate on it no matter what the season. Evocative and at the same time marvelously real, this is as much about expectation and the warmth to be found in family and friends as it is about cold ice. Children who don’t live in a cold climate will wish they did, and everyone will find this a small gem. Grades 4-7. --Ilene Cooper