To the Ice

Married Swedish collaborators the Tidholms produce a suspenseful tale in this three-chapter polar adventure. While playing at a nearby creek, brothers Jack and Max, along with their friend Ida, who narrates, find themselves adrift on a fast-flowing current after the ice they’re walking on separates from the riverbank. Soon, their makeshift raft floats them into a featureless ocean; when the floe fetches up against an ice shelf, they start walking. Watercolor spreads depict the three youths in caps and knapsacks dwarfed by the expansive polar sky and endless fields of ice. Picnic sandwiches sustain them on their journey until they bed down in a crevice, where an apparition shows Ida the way to a wooden shelter left behind by previous explorers. There, the trio spends the winter enduring mind-numbing boredom (“We learned to braid each other’s hair. We got quite good at it”) and living off the abode’s store of fish balls. Later, equally startling developments (“To be terrified, to think that it’s all over, that you’re actually going to die”) give way to a quiet resolution in this strange, enthralling blend of survivalist realism and fantasy. Ages 6–9. (Nov.)