I can't pinpoint why this didn't work for me. I'm still thinking about it so that I can give an honest opinion for book club.

Icy Sparks, a different name. The book begins when Icy was ten. A little girl, born in a tiny hollar, Poplar Hollar near a tiny town, Ginseng, in the Kentucky hills. She is an orphan, her mother died not long after she was born, her father died when she was four. She lived with her grandparents, Matanni and Patanni, who loved her. Matanni was a good cook, sewed clothes and curtains, an excellent housekeeper. Patanni worked hard, liked his drink and smoke some times. Sometimes he said words that Matanni disapproved of. The small family of three is happy. Icy is a spunky, feisty child. Her best friend is Miss Emily Tenner, who owns a food supply store and is extremely obese. Miss Emily has no friends, people make fun of her weight. Icy and Miss Emily love each other because they are different.

Then when Icy turns ten, she begins eye popping and blinking, then violent tics and cursing, words that Matanni has never hears. Many croaks and movements. She hides in the root cellar when she feels this coming on. A school mate, a young boy, catches Icy twitching and jerking behind a barn. He tells all about her actions. Icy doesn't know what is happening to her, actions she can't control and tries to hide.

The school starts, she is now in fourth grade. She starts croaking at school. Kids call her a frog. Her new teacher, Mrs Stilton, takes a dislike to her. She is the type of woman who should never have been a teacher. Icy gets worse and worse, croaking, cursing, jumping up and down. The principal, Mr Wooten, comes in and can't believe what he is seeing and is told. Coming from such a nice family. But Mr Wooten knows this is not Icy. There is something wrong. She is placed in a supply room by herself. Then she gets into a fight with Mr Wooten. She is sent to Bluegrass State Hospital. She sees so many children who are so much worse than she is. But what is wrong with her acting the way she does? Like something is in charge of her actions. She meets a young woman, Maizy Hurley, who works at the hospital. This young woman is saintly, wonderful working with these kids. Another aide, Wilma, is cruel to the kids. Icy gets into a fight with the woman. Icy speaks her mind, never holds back.

Icy goes home, doesn't go back to school. Miss Emily tutors her, she does very well. She is growing up. The book is sectioned into three parts of her life, a little girl living with her grandparents, time in the state hospital, growing up.

I enjoyed reading about Icy going with Matanni and Miss Emily to a revival. Interesting. I didn't care too much for the last chapter, singing at all the churches. She does have a beautiful voice.

Finally her illness has a name, Tourette Syndrome. This is why she jerks, tics and croaks. Icy and Miss Emily are different, which is why they are friends and love and sympathize with each other. She graduated from Berea College, Miss Emily's alma mater.

Good read. For the most part, this book was a very enthralling and entertaining read. The story itself and the writing both very fine. It's not a book, though, that's going to go down in history as one of my favorites, despite the fact I really did enjoy it.

The main problem I had with the book was the characters themselves. They were likeable enough, but with the exceptional of Icy, most everyone she encountered seemed 2Demensional at most, they weren't flushed out enough for my taste. I'm not saying every character that appears on page needs to have a full history and story going on, but there were characters that played a huge part in Icy's life that didn't have enough to them. I didn't see it with Miss Emily or Icy's grandparents. Those three were central figures in Icy's life.

Also the antagonists Icy encountered throughout her journey, like her teacher in the beginning and the one nurse at the hospital... they were just mean, there was nothing behind them pushing this meanness. Perhaps it was Rubio's way of letting us see this from young Icy's point of view. Adults don't need a reason to be mean, they just are mean! But if you're going to write in the perspective of a ten-year-old, keep it consistent.

At times I felt Icy was not thinking nor acting her age, her views became suddenly too adult, her attitude to adult. When we jump forward a couple of years I at first thought Icy was 16 or 17, not 13. It's hard to write from the perspective of younger people, so I give Rubio major props for being able to capture any of those ages.

So, basically, it was character that gave the book it's biggest flaws. But while reading it I really didn't mind. I was very interested in the subject matter, what was going on with Icy and what was going to happen. I was drawn to Icy and concerned for her a lot. Even though I knew what kind of disease Icy had, I wanted to hear the answers just as badly as she and her family did.

I would recommend this book to read. Forget what I said about characters until after you read it, don't let it cloud a very entertaining read for you.

What do unripe crab apples, golden hair, golden ocher eyes, and croaking have in common? They are Icy Sparks. Her grandparents told her that her mother ate too many unripe, green crab apples while she was pregnant so Icy turned out all yellow. Not only is she all yellow, she is different. First of all, she lives with her grandparents because her parents died soon after she was born. Second, Icy has urges she can't control. Sometimes she gets so filled up with rage she has to let it out by croaking, popping her eyes out, and jerking uncontrollably. As people begin to find out Icy’s secret, she becomes an outcast. No one understands her and no one wants to be near her for fear of catching her strangeness. The only friends she has are her grandparents, whom she calls Matanni and Patanni, and Miss Emily, the fattest woman in the county and a fellow outcast.

As Icy’s outbursts become worse, her grandparents send her to a mental institution. Icy’s experience at the institution doesn’t help her problem but she learns things about herself and others and she even makes a few friends. The novel comes to a close with Icy, several years later, explaining about her condition, Tourette Syndrome.

I was very interested throughout most of this book. I felt it was well-written, interesting, and a fast read. In fact, I very much enjoyed it until the last several pages. Icy was an independent girl who was full of spark (pun intended) and vigor. Also vim (although I’m not sure of which she has more, vim or vigor). **Spoiler Alert**At the very end of the novel she attends a church revival where people are throwing themselves around, speaking in tongues, all in the “name of the Lord”. Icy goes with the cynical view that is characteristic of her. However, as she watches all the people go crazy, she falls in line and begins to “feel God’s glory”. The rest of the book is many, many lines of bible spouting, religious talk, and Godly lyrics. I skimmed that last 10 pages or so. I just really felt that it was too easy. Icy was such a pistol, and to succumb to the bible babble so easily was just so out of character for her. I felt her entire spirit changed with just one revival.

As I said above, I enjoyed this novel up until the ending. It was at least a three-star book until those last several pages. Very disappointing.

Okay ... deep breath. This book was gifted to my mom by my aunt (her sister) a few years after my own diagnosis of Tourettes in the late 1990s. My mom is not really a reader, so she passed it on to me, and subsequently I read it when I was maybe 15 or 16. At the time I remember really liking it, and even shared it with a well-liked teacher and a few friends, who also read it. I've kept it all these years intending to read it again. But reading it now, twenty years later, is a different experience.

I've lived with Tourettes nearly all my life; it was with me as a child and all of my adult life, so you'd think I'd appreciate the representation in this book a little more ... but I don't. This book is no different from every other sensational TV show, movie, news feature, documentary, or other type of media whose (true or fictional) depictions of Tourettes are now "common-knowledge" examples of what people think this disorder is (remember "Tourette's Guy" of YouTube fame, Maury Povich specials, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo , The Wedding Singer, and that feel-good Hallmark movie In Front of the Class).

The author states that she consulted the then-Tourette Syndrome Association for information on the disorder; and firstly, I'll just say bluntly that I feel the Association has always had a very repetitive, droning approach to TS awareness and education. I myself learned about my new disorder from their stale educational materials and then continued using them for years to inform others. I know the points they highlight most, and the message they intend to drive home for their audience; and it is always the same. The facts never change, and the tone is always a bit condescending, especially toward those with the dreaded tics of coprolalia and copropraxia (inappropriate vocal and motor tics), who are and always have been "othered" even within the TS community, which desires to exclude us as outliers of an already misunderstood and misrepresented neurodevelopmental condition. And it is because of my firsthand experience with these tired old tactics and stigmas that I felt like Rubio simply sat down for an hour-long presentation from the Association on the basics of Tourettes, and then stood and declared "Welp, that's good enough for me!" and off she went to write Icy Sparks.

Rubio's approach to the disorder in the character of Icy panders to the common stereotypical version of Tourettes that existed at the time of writing, both socially and academically. Granted, not much has ever been known about TS, and research is always ongoing, but slow. Nevertheless, this story is just a cookie-cutter telling of the experience of Tourettes from the perspective of someone who obviously doesn't live with it or love someone who does. It's like knowing about cancer, hearing about cancer indirectly, and then writing a book about battling cancer, touching on typical subjects like hair loss and chemotherapy sickness, but with no real understanding of the lived experience of fighting the disease. It just feels very over-indulgent in the most patronizing way.

The classic trouble with teachers (which still exists today), the cliche writing and erasing of homework pages, the substituting of small tics for bigger urges, and the fact that doing something she loves and is good at (singing) causes her tics to take a backseat -- all of these things are just supercilious staples of what the world thinks about Tourettes, and the now-Tourette Association of America contributes in some ways (I think) to the very misunderstanding they seek to correct by not disseminating anything beyond these same, dry, beat-to-death facts and attributes over the last several decades.

As a teen reading this, I probably felt very seen and understood to recognize all the symptoms and characteristics of TS from a textbook point of view; but as an adult reading it, with 25 years experience living with Tourettes, it lacked any real feeling of what tics truly feel like, and how they impact our lives beyond just the challenges we hear about the most. It felt like the author started with a desire to write about Tourettes and uncertainly built the story around that foundation, rather than giving Icy any real character depth beyond her disorder. Her growth within the pages seems manufactured and not organic--as if Rubio knew her TS readers really needed a happy ending for Icy in order to feel good about their own experiences living with tics.

The down-home country imagery are what will stand out most in my mind after reading this book twice now. Icy's rural, 1950s Appalachian home actually comes to life superbly, and I loved that the most.

Started slow
Engaging and riveting middle
The end, full of religious fervor, was a disconnect
Not for me

I fell in love with Icy AND her grandparents. And beautiful story about a family dealing with tourettes syndrome .

I found myself very frustrated with the book. It is hard for me to be objective about the writing since I spent most of the time being so aggrivated by the way people treated her. I only finished the book because I could reason that it was the 1950's and people did not understand the disorder.
With that being said, could it be a good book because it did affect me so much? I suppose, but on this one I am rating it based on how much I enjoyed the book.

I'm always intrigued by stories about people with rare and odd conditions, so I was excited to read this one. I enjoyed the writing style, but some of the story is just too out there for me. Some of it felt like it was happening in her head rather than in reality - characters say and do things that seem so unrealistic. Got way religious for me at the end there. Overall, liked it but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

I wanted to love this book more. I absolutely loved its message and the entire concept behind it. There was just something about the way it was executed that it just didn’t work for me. Still worth a read, but a tough one to stick with in the middle of a streak of reading exceptional novels.

Quick read, finished a bit abruptly.

I fell in love with Icy and just wanted to jump into the pages, give her a hug, and tell her that I would be her friend. My only criticism is that the ending was a bit slow and drawn out. Aside from that, I really enjoyed it.