Ice by Arthur Geisert

Geisert returns with another wordless picture book featuring his industrious little pigs.  In this book, the pigs are on a desert island where it is hot and water is running very low.  So the pigs hatch a plan to find water.  Delightfully, they create a hot-air balloon from their boat and fly over the waves.  They find an iceberg, where they install a sail on the ice and take the entire thing back to their island.  The final pages show interesting details of transferring the iceberg into the water tank and the differences the ice has made in their lives.

Geisert excels at details in his illustrations.  Sweltering heat and low water are shown by bucket brigades and drooping pigs.  The time with the iceberg is shown as almost a party with pigs dancing and celebrating.  The pigs then begin working again to get the ice moved to the tank.  Somehow Geisert makes work look fun or at least very intriguing. 

These are illustrations that are small, detailed and worthy of some time spent looking at them.  Share this book with a child who loves looking closely.  Or even better, curl up together and share some time with ice, invention and imagination.  Appropriate for ages 4-7.

Reviewed from copy received from Enchanted Lion Books.

Also reviewed by:

• 100 Scope Notes
• Daddy Mojo
• Fuse #8
• Pink Me
• A Year of Reading