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Ice Palace
The story of the building of the ice palace for the annual winter carnival at Saranac Lake in New York is told by one young girl who tells of a real-life event centering on its construction done by the villagers as well as local prisoners--one of whom is her own uncle.
32 pages, Hardcover
First published October 20, 2003
About the author
Deborah Blumenthal
33 books141 followersDeborah Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and nutritionist who now divides her time between writing children's books and adult novels. She has been a regular contributor to The New York Times (including four years as the Sunday New York Times Magazine beauty columnist), and a home design columnist for Long Island Newsday. Her health, fitness, beauty, travel, and feature stories have appeared widely in many other newspapers and national magazines including New York’s Daily News, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Woman's Day, Family Circle, Self, and Vogue.
Blumenthal lives in New York City.
Blumenthal lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 27, 2017
Nice illustrations, and interesting to learn about the history of this annual Saranac event. I personally found the text a little on the dull side, but I think it would appeal to the type of child who likes factual details like weights, numbers, etc.
August 6, 2023
Right from the first page, Deborah Blumenthal sets a scene where it's easy to care about the narrator and her family.
Plenty of physical details will bring this book to life for readers, and especially for children.
Besides Blumenthal is a deft writer. She can juxtapose so much interesting information into a paragraph. For instance:
Cutting through a frozen lake isn't everyone's favorite kind of work.
And when it's down deep below zero--
the kind of weather that kills even germs--
it's hard to imagine, my father says,
that they can build up a good sweat, but they do.
On Page 12 we learn that the men who build the ice palace each year have been recruited from prison. Including the narrator's Uncle Mike.
Yes indeed, this is a thought-provoking book. Totally deserving a rating of FIVE STARS.
Thank you, compassionate writer Deborah Blumenthal. And thanks to Ted Rand, an illustrator with a distinctive style, neither realism nor fantasy nor impressionistic... simply fascinating.
Plenty of physical details will bring this book to life for readers, and especially for children.
Besides Blumenthal is a deft writer. She can juxtapose so much interesting information into a paragraph. For instance:
Cutting through a frozen lake isn't everyone's favorite kind of work.
And when it's down deep below zero--
the kind of weather that kills even germs--
it's hard to imagine, my father says,
that they can build up a good sweat, but they do.
On Page 12 we learn that the men who build the ice palace each year have been recruited from prison. Including the narrator's Uncle Mike.
Yes indeed, this is a thought-provoking book. Totally deserving a rating of FIVE STARS.
Thank you, compassionate writer Deborah Blumenthal. And thanks to Ted Rand, an illustrator with a distinctive style, neither realism nor fantasy nor impressionistic... simply fascinating.
January 13, 2010
Three and a half stars.
This story follows a young girl as she observes the design and construction of a castle made of ice. This is an annual winter tradition in her town and we come to learn that the men building the castle are actually convicts from a nearby prison. The girl's uncle is among these men. The main character reflects on the way hard work seems to bolster the spirits of the convicts and she muses on various abstract topics related to her observations.
I picked this one out from the library for my four year old. I think it was probably meant for older children. He very much enjoyed the detailed descriptions of how the ice palace was built, but he barely seemed aware of the fact that the workers were criminals and he had zero appreciation for the philosophical parts. He loved the watercolor illustrations, most especially the fireworks scene near the end.
The sentimental aspects of the story sometimes seemed excessively saccharine, or even preachy, due to the way they were worded. The topic is a lovely and worthwhile theme to explore, but the main character looks like she's about ten years old and the voice often does not sound authentic for a child of that age--most especially during the "heart-warming life lesson" parts of the book. The text is laid out with many unnecessary line breaks, as if the whole book were to be taken as a poem, and I found this distracting.
Overall: a sweet, slow-moving, reflective story. We liked it fine but the themes would probably be better comprehended and appreciated by older grade-schoolers.
This story follows a young girl as she observes the design and construction of a castle made of ice. This is an annual winter tradition in her town and we come to learn that the men building the castle are actually convicts from a nearby prison. The girl's uncle is among these men. The main character reflects on the way hard work seems to bolster the spirits of the convicts and she muses on various abstract topics related to her observations.
I picked this one out from the library for my four year old. I think it was probably meant for older children. He very much enjoyed the detailed descriptions of how the ice palace was built, but he barely seemed aware of the fact that the workers were criminals and he had zero appreciation for the philosophical parts. He loved the watercolor illustrations, most especially the fireworks scene near the end.
The sentimental aspects of the story sometimes seemed excessively saccharine, or even preachy, due to the way they were worded. The topic is a lovely and worthwhile theme to explore, but the main character looks like she's about ten years old and the voice often does not sound authentic for a child of that age--most especially during the "heart-warming life lesson" parts of the book. The text is laid out with many unnecessary line breaks, as if the whole book were to be taken as a poem, and I found this distracting.
Overall: a sweet, slow-moving, reflective story. We liked it fine but the themes would probably be better comprehended and appreciated by older grade-schoolers.
July 13, 2015
Blumenthal, Deborah. Ice Palace. Illus. Ted Rand. New York: New York, 2003. Print. Winter festivals, Saranac Lake. The author of Ice Palace takes us through the process of a winter festival coming to life and the process that a little girl, along with her father and uncle take in watching an ice palace be built right before their eyes and melt as the weather warms up. I think the author does a really good job at detailing his writing so that it is easy for the reader to imagine what is going on and how everything appears. He does this in a way that children can read his descriptive writing without confusing them at every adjective that he uses. Even though Ice Palace is a fictional book the winter festival building of an ice palace in New York actually takes place. A teacher could apply this book to her class by making it a social studies lesson during the winter.
December 13, 2013
This is an intriguing picture book. Every year in the village of Saranac Lake, NY, the people build a giant ice castle in the frozen landscape--a background for a huge winter carnival. What's unique about this is that "the people" includes residents and prisoners from a nearby medium-security prison, who work side by side on this huge project. I'd never heard of this ice palace or celebration until finding this book, and it was a wonderful discovery. The book would be best shared with primary grade children, it's a bit sophisticated for preschoolers-- it's both the story of the building of the ice structure as well as the rebuilding of men's lives.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews