The Ice House
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- ¥1,200
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
With shades of When You Reach Me, The Thing About Jellyfish, and Bridge to Terabithia, and a big, timely climate hook at its core, here is a heartfelt middle grade debut about the inevitability of change that will resonate profoundly during these extraordinary times.
Spring has arrived, and yet an unyielding winter freeze has left Louisa snowed into her apartment building for months with parents coping with extreme stress, a little brother struggling with cabin fever, and—awkwardly—her neighbor and former close friend, Luke. The new realities of this climate disaster have not only affected Louisa's family, but when Luke's dad has an ice-related accident and it's unclear if he'll recover, both families' lives are turned upside down.
Desperate to find an escape from the grief plaguing their homes, Louisa and Luke build a massive snow fort in their yard. But their creation opens up an otherworldly window to what could lie ahead, and sets them on a mission: to restore the universe to its rightful order, so the ice will melt and life will return to "normal".
With a deft combination of heartfelt prose and a touch of magic, Monica Sherwood's affecting debut novel is a relatable story of families grappling with—and emerging from—a different kind of quarantine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the six months since worldwide weather phenomenon "the Freeze" began, sixth grader Lou has tired of living through a "historic moment": attending school remotely alienates her from friends Priya and Nellie, food deliveries arrive less and less frequently, and her Nana died after slipping on ice, devastating Lou's artist mother. When an iced-over branch hits the family's neighbor—the folk musician father of Lou's former friend Luke—it causes memory loss, a tragedy that catalyzes Lou, cued as white, to again spend time with Luke, who is of Jamaican descent. Inspired by a school architecture project and wanting an escape from their respective situations, the pair builds a house of ice and snow in their apartment building's backyard. While enjoying their new refuge, the two find that the ceiling appears to offer visions of a hopeful future—one in which Lou's mom is happier and Luke's dad makes music again. Sherwood's lightly magical debut deftly mixes tween friendship difficulties and familial frustrations with an alternate reality that mirrors pandemic schooling, engagingly exploring the loneliness of an event that requires insular experiences—a feeling with which many readers will relate. Ages 8–12.
