Essay Questions

What evidence is there to prove that the book Icy Parks is full of secrets?

In her first chapter, Gwyn Hyman Rubio precisely shows the reader that the most characters in the book have secrets that they do not want to share with anybody. Icy is hiding something from her grandparents and she is not ready to discuss it with them. Her grandparents look at her with suspicion but she rolls her eyes away because she is not ready to tell them what urge is disturbing her. Icy also is suspicious that her grandparents are hiding something from her. Icy thinks that everything has secrets including the mountains, crickets, wild cats, and other animals. Icy says, "… I thought that secrets are evil, and wondered what secrets my grandparents kept hidden.” She continued to say that even crickets have secrets when she says, “I listened the crickets sing covered in shadows, their legs contorted deep in the woods; chirping, they gave their secrets away.” She continues to say, “A wild cat cried, mourning over something forbidden.” However, Icy knew that her secrets were the worst. Consequently, secrets are all over the book.

Is gossip emerging as one of the main themes in the Icy Parks book?

It is not astounding that women are often associated with gossip and Gwyn Hyman Rubio depicts the housewives as the epicenter of chinwag in her book. Icy is a friend to Miss Emily whose parents are described as fat than any other person in the neighborhood. Therefore, Emily is a fat girl who can eat a huge junk of food at one moment. Whenever Icy passes by the Comb’s restaurant near the river, she hears housewives’ gossip about Miss Emily. The midwives say that she is naturally fat because her parents were fat. They further say that she eats a lot. While at the Margaret’s Bakery, Icy hears housewives whisper that, “Emily buys three dozen sweet rolls every morning and eats all of them at once." To make matters worse, even men at the nearby barbershop gossip, "No God-Fearing man will marry Miss Emily if she took to hugging him, he would be squashed.” Stoddard’s selling lingerie and underwear whisper that “They do not make panties big enough to cover Miss Emily’s broad behind." However, they do not confront Emily and tell her directly what they think of her because they talk in groups and secrecy about her big body.

Why is Patanni angry at Icy Sparks and commanding her to apologize to her grandmother?

There is a sharp contrast between Icy’s grandparents. Matanni, her grandmother, is a charming old woman who likes making jokes with children. On the other hand, Patanni, the grandfather is a strict man who does not entertain harsh comments made by children to the elderly. When Icy looks at her grandmother and tells her that she has grey hair, the grandfather feels that it is disrespectful to tell an old woman like that. Therefore, he gets angry and commands Icy to apologize to her grandmother.