ICE

A heat wave compels an industrious community of island piggies to build a giant ship, complete with masts and rigging, and voyage to retrieve an Arctic iceberg and cool off. Why is this wooden boat airborne, tethered to an enormous balloon? Welcome to Geisert’s peculiar porcine province! This wordless picture book, full of intricate color etchings, invites readers to loosen up and enjoy a story that makes no sense at all. Some will immediately giggle (clothed pigs frolicking in a pool of iceberg ice-cubes! Ha!), savor myriad quirky details (check out the pigs’ funky angular houses—with skylights!) and expand upon Geisert’s unfettered imagination (how did they get on that little sandy island? a shipwreck?). Many young readers might find the whole foray too inexplicable, too weird and offering too little action. Pigs set up a fan in front of the Arctic ice cube to get some AC at the end...great. Others will simply connect happily with the cheerful can-do attitude of the pigs—whether or not it makes any sense, the last image, of a large pig family enjoying ice water as a cool breeze blows in, two little piggies barely visible under the table, charms. Geisert’s meticulous illustrations won’t amuse everyone, but they certainly conjure a fully realized piggy world—an island at home with itself, floating way out there in the ocean. (Picture book. 4-10)