Product Description

Ivan lives in a land where the winter is dark and fearful. Starjik, King of Winter, steals Ivan's little brother and Ivan braves the bitter cold to find him.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25090 in Books
• Published on: 1992-11-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Robert Swindells lives on the Yorkshire moors and is a full-time writer. He has won the Children's Book Award twice, for BROTHER IN THE LAND and for ROOM 13. In 1994, he won the Carnegie Medal for STONE COLD, and also the Sheffield Book Award.

Customer Reviews

Icy world
This is an amazing book with an amazing story! Not the most atractive cover in the world I've got to admit but this book contains the story of a life time. There are howling grey wolves and vicious bears. I think a small summary of the story is needed. In a village near the forest chilldren start disepearing. Now there are only two chilldren left. How will the townspeople protect them and get their other young ones back. Or will they?

Review - Ice Palace
Starjik, a child taker, always came to the village to take away the children. One night, Starjik came and took away Ivan's little brother. Ivan loved his brother and so he went on a journey to find Starjik's land. Ivan was in great danger many times on the way to Starjik's place. But he finally arrived there safely. He was not afraid of Starjik and was able to warm his heart and turned him into a good person again. Therefore, the frozen children, including his brother, were saved. And they all went home happily.

This book is a bit weird but has many good parts. My favorite part is when an old woman gave Ivan his tears that he cried for his brother. And Ivan later used the tears to warm Starjik's heart. Another interesting part of the story is that the old woman used miracles to change herself into different things to help Ivan. She has changed into a snowy owl, a bear and a fir tree to save Ivan from all kinds of dangers. The weirdest part of the story is the picture illustrations especially for the one on page seventeen. It was unclear to the readers whether the person in the picture was Ivan or his mother. And we don't know where the person was by looking at the picture. Another favourite part of the story is when Ivan warmed Starjik's heart and that helped Starjik to understand his problems. Finally, Starjik let all the children go back home.

At school, I gave eight stars (out of ten) to this book even though the pictures are weird. In Amazon, I'll give four stars (out of five) to the book.

Constance Chu, age 7 (almost 8)

Favourite author
Bought this for my 9 year old son as he has read a number of Robert Swindells books. Although he really enjoyed it, it didn't grab him in the same way as some of the others such as 'Ghost of Givenham Keep'.