Twelve Kinds of Ice

Snuggle up under blankets for this one, because it’s bound to make you COLD. As its title promises, it’s all about ice. But ice is magical in Ellen Bryan Obed’s descriptive, nostalgic book about winter in Maine. Each short chapter describes the types of ice in winter, from a skim on the sheep pail to, eventually, an ice show on a back-yard ice rink. The illustrations are delicate pen-and-ink drawings, not too colorful — and therefore fittingly wintry.

Twelve Kinds of Ice reminded me a little of Tasha Tudor’s A Time to Keep, because of its backward-looking orientation, but also because it describes family traditions. Because the book is mainly descriptive rather than plot-based, I asked the girls after the first few chapters whether they wanted me to continue reading. Their response was unhesitating: yes! In fact, my youngest commandeered it after I finished, and she’s been reading and rereading it ever since. (Her favorite ice in the book is “Dream Ice.”)

The book has a unique charm. How many families create an ice rink in their vegetable garden in winter, then invite the neighbors? How many fathers put on a comedy show at night, going out to repair the ice’s imperfections with fresh flooding via the garden hose? How many of us are aware of the many different types of ice — different thicknesses (milk pail skim vs. fully frozen sheep-pail sheet), textures (rough post-thaw ice), locations (field, stream, pond)?

Years ago, a friend from southern Ohio who came to visit once in the winter marveled at the way Northeasterners are not stopped in their tracks by snow. It was a different experience for her to see us going about our ordinary business even with six or ten inches of snow on the ground. We know what to do with snow — and are more stymied by the lack of it than by a deluge of the stuff.

But it’s clear that Maine-dwellers are made of still stronger stuff. I was convinced of it when the family in this book kept a calendar specifically to record the lifespan of the winter’s ice — including the record year of ice for 99 days. This is a nice read for the chilly season, one that evokes the cosiness of hot cocoa after an afternoon in the cold, and the simplicity of a time and place where play was both marvelously creative and inter-generational. Recommended!

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