The Ice Garden

Jess has a serious allergy to the sun which means she cannot go out during the day without all-encompassing protective clothing (which she and her mother refer to as 'full hat'). This restriction means that she does not attend school and consequently has few opportunities to make friends. Most of her outings involve trips to the hospital and, on one of these occasions, she comes across a boy in a coma, seemingly unresponsive to everything around him. On future visits to the hospital, she reads him stories she has written, not knowing whether he can hear them or not. At about the same time, Jess, whose frustration with the restrictions that her allergy places on her life sometimes boils over, leaves her home after dark without telling her mother, just to experience a little bit of freedom. It is then she comes across the Ice Garden and eventually meets its only inhabitant, just before things start to get really strange. The relationship between Jess and her mother is central to this story. Her mother is trying to keep her safe, which Jess understands, but all Jess wants is a normal life with school and friends. When it looks like Jess's allergy is mysteriously getting better, allowing the prospect of a normal life to enter both their thinking, her mother clearly finds difficulty in viewing Jess as anyone other than a sickly child and the changes in their relationship that would follow. Does the strange inhabitant of the Ice Garden have anything to do with the improvement in her allergy? Is he connected to the comatose boy in the hospital bed? What happens to the Ice Garden when its magic is taken outside? All these questions and more are answered in the final few breath-taking chapters of this intriguing book that will keep the reader hooked until the very end. 224 pages / Ages 10+ / Reviewed by June Hughes, school librarian.

Suggested Reading Age 9+