Cecil the Pet Glacier [Hardcover]

Matthea Harvey (Author), Giselle Potter (Illustrator)

Book Description

Release date: August 14, 2012 | Age Range: 4 - 8 years | Lexile Measure: 820L (What's this?)

In a starred review Publishers Weekly raves: "It’s an avant-garde, surrealist story with a Hollywood-style tearjerker lurking within—and a surprisingly charming and affecting one at that."

Award-winning poet Matthea Harvey and illustrator extraordinaire Giselle Potter team up to create an indescribably unique picture book about wanting to be normal, then coming to appreciate being different. Ruby would love to be like everyone else—not easy when you have a tiara-wearing mother and a father who spends his time trimming outrageous topiary. She'd also like to get a nice normal pet, maybe a dog. Then, on a family vacation to Norway, she finds herself adopted by a small, affectionate glacier. How Cecil, as the ice pet is named, proves himself to Ruby—risking his own meltdown—is a story sure to thrill and delight young readers.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Ruby’s father, Mr. Small, is a topiary gardener and Mrs. Small, a tiara designer. They mostly have eyes for each other, leaving Ruby to care for her identical dolls, the three Jennifers. On a trip to Norway, Ruby acquires a pet. Though she wanted a dog, she attracts a small piece of glacier, Cecil. Ruby doesn’t consider Cecil much of a pet and tries to rid herself of him, especially on the playground. Occasionally he melts (or is he weeping?). Then one of the Jennifers is lost, and to Ruby’s amazement, it’s Cecil who finds her. Some may frown at the fact that Cecil only gets a Ruby-made tiara after he proves useful to her, but the story is so delightfully odd, why try and draw morals from it? Potter’s stylized art, with its deadpan characterizations, proves the perfect pairing for a text that provides her the opportunity to draw a father who cuts a crocodile into his beard. Quirky in the best sense, this shows that not all families are alike and, if properly cared for, miniglaciers make good pets. Grades K-2. --Ilene Cooper

Review

Starred Review, Publishers Weekly, June 6, 2012:
“It’s an avant-garde, surrealist story with a Hollywood-style tearjerker lurking within—
and a surprisingly charming and affecting one at that.”

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 4 - 8 years
  
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Schwartz & Wade (August 14, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375867732
• ISBN-13: 978-0375867736
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 0.4 x 10.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #212,857 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book About A Pet Glacier You Will Find Hands Down September 25, 2012

By Maracas

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I got this in the mail on a horribly stressful day, and it turned my frown upside down. I want a pet glacier like Cecil too. Heart-warming and laugh out loud funny. Wonderful Illustrations and Beautifully Written.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightfully weird December 25, 2012

By Madigan McGillicuddy

Format:Hardcover

This story is bizarre, fascinating, strange and wonderful. Cecil the Pet Glacier is about a girl who is so desperate for a pet, she ends up saddled with a mini-glacier. This is so decidedly odd, I wondered if this was a foreign translation! Nope. It's American.

Ruby Small likes to think of herself as an aggressively normal kid. It's not her fault that her father is a topiary artist, and her mother is a tiara designer. Relatively flat watercolor illustrations depict a straight-faced family amidst some pretty zany ideas with tongue-in-cheek humor. I loved the way Ruby's father calls her by the pet name "hedgeling," and her mother packs dozens of hatboxes for their vacation, since she doesn't like to repeat tiaras while she's traveling.

When Cecil the Glacier appears to imprint on a reluctant Ruby, her first words are, "Oh, no... Please no." Poor little Cecil has a lot of personality for a bob of ice. He's devastated when Ruby is picked on at school, "Cecil shed a tear... from the area where his eyes would have been if he'd had eyes, which he didn't." Ruby finally comes around after Cecil risks his life saving one of her three boring, yet beloved dolls, all named Jennifer. The story ends with a promise of Ruby starting to embrace her inner weirdness. Great fun for older kids.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Little Girl + Pet Glacier = Quirky Picture Book September 17, 2012

By Catherine Nichols

Format:Hardcover

Mary's fleecy white lamb of nursery-rhyme fame has nothing on Cecil the Pet Glacier. The heroic chunk of compressed ice not only follows its mistress, Ruby Small, to school, it risks its very life performing a daring rescue.

Before this dramatic event occurs, the story opens with a glacier-less Ruby, "a normal little girl" who values conformity. Her eccentric parents test her sanity daily by dancing the tango on the front lawn among the fabulous topiary Mr. Small trims and shapes. Ruby keeps her distance from the pair, staying indoors, curtains drawn, and playing with her trio of dolls, "The Three Jennifers," each one dressed like Ruby in plain brown pinafores.

When the family travels to Norway for vacation, a "tiny, strange-shape glacier" befriends her and follows her around. The attachment is one-sided as Ruby is mortified by the glacier's attention. She looks forward to the end of vacation when she'll be leaving "the ice-pest" behind. Except her parents, delighted with the unusual pet, purchase an ice chest and Cecil travels back home with them. There, Ruby ignores Cecil until the fateful day on the school playground when the little ice floe distinguishes itself by saving one of Ruby's beloved dolls at great cost to itself, earning in the process Ruby's admiration and gratitude.

This quirky picture book exudes charm and the details are spot on. Cecil, for example, is fed a diet of pebbles. "Finicky like a cat, he liked white and black pebbles but wouldn't eat the gray ones." And my favorite line: "He didn't speak, but when he was happy he creaked." Potter's surreal watercolor illustrations are a perfect marriage with Harvey's quirky text.