Ellen Bryan Obed

So retro and charming. Reminds me of something Erik Blegvad would have co-created. Makes me wish that I liked winter and could skate... but even though I grew up in N. Wisconsin, nope on both counts.

Love love the poetic language in this. "Our blades spit out silver. Our lungs breathed out silver." "Dad loved ... the friendly stars, the clear cold. He wore huge, heavy gloves and a tired tattered coat with a fur-lined collar pulled up to his hat."

This novel, set in Maine, reminds me so much of my ice-skating escapades while growing up in Connecticut. My brother and sister, our neighbors and I tested the ice on the small pond in the field until we knew it was ready and safe. Sometimes it was so clear we could see through it like a window to another world, that of sunfish and salamanders, still active under the ice. Clear ice was usually smooth and ideal for skating. Other times it was milky-white and bumpy; our teeth rattled as we show more skated over icy ridges and once I tripped on a twig standing upright in the ice and split my lip. If a dry snow fell, we could sweep the ice clear with a broom, but if it was wet, we were through with skating. In a really cold winter, the larger lakes froze over and our parents came with us to skate longer and farther. I never skated at a rink or indoors as a child. To me, skating was, and still is, an outdoor activity, entrenched in the natural world.
I loved Obed's book for bringing back these wonderful memories and introducing me to a family and community of skaters. Her prose is often beautiful: "The morning field ice came was like no other. Ice froze upon our day, and at school we could not think clearly - math and geography and reading were frozen solid." (p. 14). She uses words most creatively: "Then we'd follow Dad again until the stream SMALLED to a brook of bent alders." (p. 16, capitalization emphasis mine) Her analogies are lovely, as in this ode to silver: "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." (p. 19). McLintock's black and white drawings contribute additional grace and spirit. My favorite is on page 17, where the two girls are weaving along the meanders of the brook lined with bent alders. show less

One winter season is perfectly encapsulated through a family's descriptions of the "Twelve Kinds of Ice" they encounter along the way. The reflective writing and the whimsical illustrations will make even the most sun-baked among us long for a turn on the backyard rink. A nostalgic homage, beautifully rendered.

From the first hint of ice on the water pail in the barn, through the last freeze in the spring, this book follows a family and their group of friends as they create an ice rink in their garden, complete with figure skating, ice hokey, and even a special performance near the end of the season. The descriptions are vivid and the prose is lovely, and the accompanying illustrations by Barbara McClintock complete the story nicely. The chapters are more vignettes than stories, and characters are show more not distinguished individually. On one hand, this allows readers to insert themselves in the group of enthusiastic skaters, but readers looking for something with more of a narrative thrust will be disappointed. Ultimately, this book is more likely to appeal to nostalgic adults than to children. show less