To celebrate the release of The Ice Children by M. G. Leonard tomorrow, Thursday 2nd November 2023, I have decided to post my review of this beautiful book.

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Title: The Ice Children

Written by: M.G. Leonard

Illustrated by: Penny Neville-Lee

Published by: Macmillan Children’s Books

I requested to read this book from NetGalley because I enjoyed M.G. Leonard’s Beetle Boy books and the Twitcher series. I was not disappointed as I was instantly drawn in by the narrative of this modern day fairy tale.

M.G. Leonard explains in her acknowledgments how she was inspired by the familiar stories of The Snow Queen, Pinocchio, and The Selfish Giant to create an imaginative new story which will linger in your mind as do many timeless classics. The brilliant action-driven plot does not spend unnecessary time world building without moving the story forward. I can imagine The Ice Children making a lovely magical children’s Christmas movie.

The main character, Bianca has to use her detective skills to work out why more and more children are appearing as frozen statues in the park. She links the strange happenings to a mysterious silver book her brother discovered in the library. M. G. Leonard realistically portrays how children are not listened to in times of emergency and their ideas dismissed as childish fantasies.

The only option Bianca has is to stop the mysterious disappearances on her own and discover who is responsible for turning her brother and friends to ice. She uses the clues to transport herself to a wintery wonderland, highlighting how books really are doorways to other worlds. I particularly enjoyed reading about the different spirit animals each of the children had in the magical world. I wondered what my own spirit animal would be long before I reached the end. I decided it was probably a bear.

I adored the cover and illustrations by Penny Neville-Lee and believe they would be even more magnificent in a real book format rather than viewing on my kindle. They are beautiful and add to the magical atmosphere of this book. The short chapters made this a quick and easy read. I seemed to fly through the pages, devouring every word.

It was evident about half-way through there was no real antagonist. In fact the real villain of the book is us – the human race – whose extravagance and negligence has caused the global warming which the world is suffering from creating a world ‘where winter cannot survive.’

Bianca strives to show the children they can make a difference as they are the adults of the future. They have the power to make changes to build better habits which will help the environment. In this way, M. G. Leonard has pro-actively crafted a spell-binding novel, which successfully treads the thin line between conveying an important message and preaching. The Ice Children gives children the power to do something now to prevent climate change.

This book leaves you with hope that it will indeed touch people’s hearts and change the way they think.

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This review of The Ice Children has been previously posted on NetGalley and Goodreads. I would like to thank Macmillan Children’s Books and NetGalley for organising me a digital review copy of the book. Thank you.

You can find out more about M. G. Leonard and her books on her website www.mgleonard.com and follow her on social media: Twitter @mglnrd; Instagram @mglnrd; Facebook @MGLnrd.

I have also reviewed Spark by M. G. Leonard on my blog in December 2022. To read this review take a look at: Book Review: Spark

I also had the pleasure of interviewing M. G. Leonard for the #219 Jan 2019 issue of the UK national magazine, Writers’ Forum about her research for the Beetle Boy series. You can read highlights from this Writers’ Forum interview here: An interview with… M. G. Leonard