Elizabeth Imagined An Iceberg - Hardcover

Raschka, Chris

2.88

16 ratings by Goodreads

9780531068175: Elizabeth Imagined An Iceberg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 053106817X ISBN 13: 9780531068175

Publisher: Scholastic, 1994

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By visualizing an iceberg and remembering how strong it can be, Elizabeth finds the inner strength to say, "Get away from me!" to a strange woman who is bothering her

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About the Author:

For Chris Raschka, the first step in his creative process is thinking about his audience - a single imaginary child who is a blend of myself, the students in my wife's classroom - and the students from two classrooms I visit regularly." Raschka, a Caldecott Medalist for The Hello, Goodbye Window and a Caldecott Honoree for Yo! Yes?, draws from any number of images or events - a poem, personal experience, or childhood recollection. He then pulls these ideas into book form. Once the story's complete, he shows it to his audience to gauge their reaction. "And then I may make some changes," he concedes. Raschka lives with his wife and son in New York City. For more information about Chris Raschka, visit: scholastic.com/tradebooks

From School Library Journal:

Kindergarten-Grade 6-A provocative but chilling book. Elizabeth meets a large woman who sips green, bubbling soda and giggles. When Madam Uff Da sweeps her up in an unwelcome embrace and begins a dizzying dance, Elizabeth imagines an iceberg. It gives her the courage to tell the bizarre stranger to "get away from me." Raschka successfully replicates a common encounter with an adult whose behavior is so odd that a child knows instinctively that something is wrong. Through surrealistic distortion, gesture, and expression, the inebriated woman is depicted as more scary than dangerous. The use of heavily saturated red, black, and orange suggests an unsettling image of the disorienting debauchery. There are several disturbing issues here. The most obvious is how a child copes with a frightening stranger. There may be a darker subtext. The first page tells readers that Elizabeth imagines an iceberg and, "confident that it might be friendly, she visited it often, quite bravely." This is reminiscent of a survival technique called dissociation, common to victims of sexual abuse. Young readers may be puzzled by the use of an iceberg as a symbol of refuge and confused by the euphemistic term "soda." Adults will regret that the apprehensive Elizabeth promptly tells the woman her name. Raschka portrays a serious and bewildering incident in which the child may have neither the vocabulary nor the experience to verbalize or interpret easily but from which she is empowered, by her own action, to extricate herself. Consider for inclusion on bibliographies dealing with issues of alcohol and drug abuse.
Kate McClelland, Perrot Memorial Library, Greenwich, CT
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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