ON THIN ICE New Edition!
BY BRIAN F. MCNABB New Price!
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On Thin Ice contains riveting stories that illuminate the common thread between all boys growing up, dealing with family, friendships, and relationships. In the thirteen short stories and two novellas, characters come to terms with a variety of challenges from honesty to responsibility.
ISBN-10: 0977250520 ISBN-13: 978-0977250523 |
On Thin Ice Reviews
“To young men it is a world of stuff you do not tell your mom about because she would not understand and of things you do egged on by friends that you know your dad would not approve of . . . a world of imagination, exploration and sometimes physical injury beyond the bump on the head you get falling down the stairs of an abandoned house you were told to stay away from. The experiences teach lessons that form the man. Lessons fathers may or may not remember from their own youth, but that seem to provide them the answers and the rules by which they rear their own sons.” - Don Eriksson, Nashoba Publishing Speaking from experience, using a tree branch like a diving board to jump into a large pile of leaves is not something "Patrick" would recommend . . .the 12-year-old boy is the main character in the book "On Thin Ice" . . . wild and crazy antics . . . short stories that revolve around different challenges that Patrick faces during his pre-teen years, such as peer pressure and friendship. - Melanie Nelson, Laconia Citizen |
Doses of humor, crisp dialogue, interesting dilemmas . . . grab the reader's attention and keep it . . . A fun read for anyone."
- Randy Wormald
2005 New Hampshire Teacher of the Year recipient
2005 Disney Outstanding High School Teacher Award recipient
"The reader plunges into mischievous tales of a young boy . . . you are in the scene growing up all over again."
-Alison Charbeneau
Promising Practitioner - New England League of Middle Schools - 2004 recipient
"Readers will meet characters . . . not so unlike younger versions of themselves . . . Life lessons with laughs."
- Michelle Walter
2004 Christa McAuliffe Award recipient
2005 The I CAN Learn - NEA Foundation Awards for Teaching Excellence recipient
Friday, November 11, 2005 From the Laconia Citizen (George J. Foster Co.)
Life's lessons in print
By MELANIE NELSON Staff Writer
BELMONT HIGH SCHOOL English Teacher Brian McNabb discusses a passage from his book, "On Thin Ice" in class Wednesday.
Speaking from experience, using a tree branch like a diving board to jump into a large pile of leaves is not something "Patrick" would recommend.
The 12-year-old boy is the main character in the book "On Thin Ice" that mirrors many of the wild and crazy antics carried out by the author, Brian McNabb when he was the same age.
An English teacher at Belmont High School, McNabb said it was great to relive his childhood through Patrick without actually going through the pain he experienced after some of his tricks.
"The pile rises to about four feet. The maple tree limb that we are planning to jump off of is about eight feet off the ground. The colored leaves have fallen directly under the tree and are easy to rake. We don't have to do much to make a pile. How can you beat an Indian summer day in October and a monstrous pile of leaves?"
"— a bit more and we'll be ready to jump. I'm first. I'm Superman. Indestructible," Patrick says to his friend Tony.
"Nothing that bad ever happens to me for doing things. I can do what I want," thinks Patrick as he climbs the tree.
"Tony, it's show time," Patrick calls out.
"I press my weight down. This limb springs back like a diving board. I spring up and jump out. For a few seconds I seem to float in the air. I hit the pile and the leaves crunch and crackle. Wham! My head slams into the ground. I am buried in black. Suddenly, my body aches and feels smashed. The ride to the hospital is cloudy. People just keep talking and touching. In my mind I'm screaming at my arm to move. Why won't it?"
An x-ray showed that Patrick cracked his third and fifth vertebrae and it was two weeks before he was able to walk again. It was several months before he was able to return to school and play hockey again.
"On Thin Ice" is comprised of 16 short stories that revolve around different challenges that Patrick faces during his pre-teen years, such as peer pressure and friendship.
"It's not that every story has a point, but they have a moral," said McNabb, explaining that the book is written so it is not overwhelming to people who have difficulty reading.
He said he sometimes has difficultly finding appropriate books for that particular group of students and was thinking of them as he wrote his story.
"As I went, I started thinking what would they like and how would I teach it," said McNabb. "I wanted something they could relate to, something realistic in their life that they're going through. It inspires some to read where reading is not necessarily their first choice."
All of the stories, the pile of leaves just being one of many, McNabb said all happened to him or one of his three brothers.
He started writing the book during a National Writer's Project he took at Plymouth State University. The program, he said, is to encourage teachers who write to share their stories and also learn how to write better.
"We had to pick an event that happened in childhood and write about how it has effected us," said McNabb. "Once I started writing it, I really liked it. I didn't think I could write a book, but I liked how it turned out."
McNabb said he mostly worked on the book over four summers, but he did some with the students his class.
"The students helped me keep going," he said, mentioning that they laughed at certain parts in the book
Initially, he said he didn't tell the students he wrote it, but they really liked it, which gave him the encouragement to continue with the book and eventually reveal that Patrick was actually him.
"I had a lot of help from people in the school," said McNabb.
The book hit store shelves last month and already many of his students have bought the book.
A student read it in two days, which McNabb said totally surprised him as the student rarely reads.
If he writes another book, he said he would pick up where he left off.
Life's lessons in print
By MELANIE NELSON Staff Writer
BELMONT HIGH SCHOOL English Teacher Brian McNabb discusses a passage from his book, "On Thin Ice" in class Wednesday.
Speaking from experience, using a tree branch like a diving board to jump into a large pile of leaves is not something "Patrick" would recommend.
The 12-year-old boy is the main character in the book "On Thin Ice" that mirrors many of the wild and crazy antics carried out by the author, Brian McNabb when he was the same age.
An English teacher at Belmont High School, McNabb said it was great to relive his childhood through Patrick without actually going through the pain he experienced after some of his tricks.
"The pile rises to about four feet. The maple tree limb that we are planning to jump off of is about eight feet off the ground. The colored leaves have fallen directly under the tree and are easy to rake. We don't have to do much to make a pile. How can you beat an Indian summer day in October and a monstrous pile of leaves?"
"— a bit more and we'll be ready to jump. I'm first. I'm Superman. Indestructible," Patrick says to his friend Tony.
"Nothing that bad ever happens to me for doing things. I can do what I want," thinks Patrick as he climbs the tree.
"Tony, it's show time," Patrick calls out.
"I press my weight down. This limb springs back like a diving board. I spring up and jump out. For a few seconds I seem to float in the air. I hit the pile and the leaves crunch and crackle. Wham! My head slams into the ground. I am buried in black. Suddenly, my body aches and feels smashed. The ride to the hospital is cloudy. People just keep talking and touching. In my mind I'm screaming at my arm to move. Why won't it?"
An x-ray showed that Patrick cracked his third and fifth vertebrae and it was two weeks before he was able to walk again. It was several months before he was able to return to school and play hockey again.
"On Thin Ice" is comprised of 16 short stories that revolve around different challenges that Patrick faces during his pre-teen years, such as peer pressure and friendship.
"It's not that every story has a point, but they have a moral," said McNabb, explaining that the book is written so it is not overwhelming to people who have difficulty reading.
He said he sometimes has difficultly finding appropriate books for that particular group of students and was thinking of them as he wrote his story.
"As I went, I started thinking what would they like and how would I teach it," said McNabb. "I wanted something they could relate to, something realistic in their life that they're going through. It inspires some to read where reading is not necessarily their first choice."
All of the stories, the pile of leaves just being one of many, McNabb said all happened to him or one of his three brothers.
He started writing the book during a National Writer's Project he took at Plymouth State University. The program, he said, is to encourage teachers who write to share their stories and also learn how to write better.
"We had to pick an event that happened in childhood and write about how it has effected us," said McNabb. "Once I started writing it, I really liked it. I didn't think I could write a book, but I liked how it turned out."
McNabb said he mostly worked on the book over four summers, but he did some with the students his class.
"The students helped me keep going," he said, mentioning that they laughed at certain parts in the book
Initially, he said he didn't tell the students he wrote it, but they really liked it, which gave him the encouragement to continue with the book and eventually reveal that Patrick was actually him.
"I had a lot of help from people in the school," said McNabb.
The book hit store shelves last month and already many of his students have bought the book.
A student read it in two days, which McNabb said totally surprised him as the student rarely reads.
If he writes another book, he said he would pick up where he left off.
Boyhood times in Pepperell captured in McNabb book — ‘On Thin Ice’
By Don Eriksson
PEPPERELL — Most boys encounter a world of friends, mischief making, dares and trying to look cool to peers while struggling to follow parental guidelines as they are growing up.
To young men it is a world of stuff you do not tell your mom about because she would not understand and of things you do egged on by friends that you know your dad would not approve of. It is a world of imagination, exploration and sometimes physical injury beyond the bump on the head you get falling down the stairs of an abandoned house you were told to stay away from.
The experiences teach lessons that form the man. Lessons fathers may or may not remember from their own youth, but that seem to provide them the answers and the rules by which they rear their own sons.
Brian McNabb has not forgotten those days and has shared them in an easily read, entertaining and memory provoking series of vignettes in his newly published book “On Thin Ice” (Imperial Swamp Press of Jewett Street, Pepperell).
A Pepperell native, son of John and Kathleen McNabb, Brian’s work is based on his own experiences growing up in a small town.
Now a father of a daughter, Erin, and husband to Terri McNabb, he lives in Concord, N.H., and teaches English in New Hampshire’s lakes region and at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). Since graduating from North Middlesex Regional High School (NMRHS) he has earned a bachelor’s in English from Rivier College and a master’s in English from UNH. He has taught at the middle school, high school and college level.
McNabb taught English and was a special needs teacher at NMRHS and for two years. He also coached the school’s state championship hockey team of 1994 and 1995 with Sandy Ruggles. He played hockey in high school under coach Richard Movsession.
A hockey player himself throughout his youth, sport has a special meaning for him, particularly hockey, for when he was 12, McNabb broke his neck jumping out of a tree into a pile of leaves.
“Some of the book is a hockey story,” he said. “It took me about a year to get back to playing, and I’m lucky I can walk.”
A photograph of him wearing a P.A.T. hockey uniform is on the front cover.
“It wasn’t my choice, but it seemed the best photo to illustrate what we wanted,” he said.
The hockey story is a main plot in McNabb’s book, but it is arrived at via 13 short stories McNabb describes as “beginning experiences I, or my brothers, had and told from the point of view of one character that leads into the neck breaker story.”
Each story has a point to make, related from a child’s viewpoint in short, understandable sentences. Recognizable Pepperell scenes include Menchion’s and Heald ponds and the Nashua River. McNabb mowed town fields to earn extra money.
The book begins with a poem titled “Sand Castles and Such,” followed by a story about a young man’s struggle to fess up to breaking a grandfather’s prized statue when unable to flee the house before being discovered as had two friends.
The lad is taught by the fearsome but benevolent grandfather to “be a man,” and when saying “goodbye” to look the person straight in the eye, only to be forced to do so shortly afterward under different circumstances.
Characters are fictional but based on real Pepperell residents. Incidents are also real, some of which show the lad the strengths of his upbringing under trying circumstances.
McNabb’s brother, Brennan (mentioned in the book), teaches English at NMRHS. Two other siblings became engineers.
“My uncle Terry [McNabb] who owns Townsend Pharmacy has a friend, Tom Campbell, who is in the publishing business, and he read my short stories.” McNabb said in explanation of why he wrote the book. “It’s my first. I’m trying to [play] to interest of boys age 10 and up.
“It reaches a wide audience,” he said. “Some of the kids I’ve talked to liked it. Some laughed.”
John McNabb said his son is one family member who did not work much in the McNabb General Store as he grew.
“I did a little, stocking shelves etc., but I probably cost him more in candy and soda,” the younger McNabb said.
Copies of “On Thin Ice” stand on the counter of the store on Main Street, however, and John is quick to point to them.
“Response has been pretty good,” Brian said. “We’ve sold about 230 in the first 10 days.”
Copies can also be bought at McNabb’s Pharmacy in Townsend, in N.H. border stores and on Amazon.com.
“I plan to write another,” McNabb said. “It was a lot of fun trying to capture all the things we did. The next will be more of a complete novel, probably part two with more complicated issues.”
By Don Eriksson
PEPPERELL — Most boys encounter a world of friends, mischief making, dares and trying to look cool to peers while struggling to follow parental guidelines as they are growing up.
To young men it is a world of stuff you do not tell your mom about because she would not understand and of things you do egged on by friends that you know your dad would not approve of. It is a world of imagination, exploration and sometimes physical injury beyond the bump on the head you get falling down the stairs of an abandoned house you were told to stay away from.
The experiences teach lessons that form the man. Lessons fathers may or may not remember from their own youth, but that seem to provide them the answers and the rules by which they rear their own sons.
Brian McNabb has not forgotten those days and has shared them in an easily read, entertaining and memory provoking series of vignettes in his newly published book “On Thin Ice” (Imperial Swamp Press of Jewett Street, Pepperell).
A Pepperell native, son of John and Kathleen McNabb, Brian’s work is based on his own experiences growing up in a small town.
Now a father of a daughter, Erin, and husband to Terri McNabb, he lives in Concord, N.H., and teaches English in New Hampshire’s lakes region and at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). Since graduating from North Middlesex Regional High School (NMRHS) he has earned a bachelor’s in English from Rivier College and a master’s in English from UNH. He has taught at the middle school, high school and college level.
McNabb taught English and was a special needs teacher at NMRHS and for two years. He also coached the school’s state championship hockey team of 1994 and 1995 with Sandy Ruggles. He played hockey in high school under coach Richard Movsession.
A hockey player himself throughout his youth, sport has a special meaning for him, particularly hockey, for when he was 12, McNabb broke his neck jumping out of a tree into a pile of leaves.
“Some of the book is a hockey story,” he said. “It took me about a year to get back to playing, and I’m lucky I can walk.”
A photograph of him wearing a P.A.T. hockey uniform is on the front cover.
“It wasn’t my choice, but it seemed the best photo to illustrate what we wanted,” he said.
The hockey story is a main plot in McNabb’s book, but it is arrived at via 13 short stories McNabb describes as “beginning experiences I, or my brothers, had and told from the point of view of one character that leads into the neck breaker story.”
Each story has a point to make, related from a child’s viewpoint in short, understandable sentences. Recognizable Pepperell scenes include Menchion’s and Heald ponds and the Nashua River. McNabb mowed town fields to earn extra money.
The book begins with a poem titled “Sand Castles and Such,” followed by a story about a young man’s struggle to fess up to breaking a grandfather’s prized statue when unable to flee the house before being discovered as had two friends.
The lad is taught by the fearsome but benevolent grandfather to “be a man,” and when saying “goodbye” to look the person straight in the eye, only to be forced to do so shortly afterward under different circumstances.
Characters are fictional but based on real Pepperell residents. Incidents are also real, some of which show the lad the strengths of his upbringing under trying circumstances.
McNabb’s brother, Brennan (mentioned in the book), teaches English at NMRHS. Two other siblings became engineers.
“My uncle Terry [McNabb] who owns Townsend Pharmacy has a friend, Tom Campbell, who is in the publishing business, and he read my short stories.” McNabb said in explanation of why he wrote the book. “It’s my first. I’m trying to [play] to interest of boys age 10 and up.
“It reaches a wide audience,” he said. “Some of the kids I’ve talked to liked it. Some laughed.”
John McNabb said his son is one family member who did not work much in the McNabb General Store as he grew.
“I did a little, stocking shelves etc., but I probably cost him more in candy and soda,” the younger McNabb said.
Copies of “On Thin Ice” stand on the counter of the store on Main Street, however, and John is quick to point to them.
“Response has been pretty good,” Brian said. “We’ve sold about 230 in the first 10 days.”
Copies can also be bought at McNabb’s Pharmacy in Townsend, in N.H. border stores and on Amazon.com.
“I plan to write another,” McNabb said. “It was a lot of fun trying to capture all the things we did. The next will be more of a complete novel, probably part two with more complicated issues.”
Customer Reviews
Summer reading,
August 26, 2006
A Kid's Review
I had to read a book this summer and read this one. I did a book report. It has funny things in it. I liked the story about the gangs and pets best. I don't like reading but this was not boring.
Just what the doctor ordered!,
April 1, 2006
Reviewer:Sheila A. Ward (New England)
-This book is filled with short stories that are very attention grabbing and full of "being a kid" action. The stories teach important lessons incorporating some of the values students have lost. Brian's book is very easy to read and with its intended design, the stories are condensed so to keep the attention of the reader. I believe the reading level is approximately middle school level. It is a wonderful teaching tool and the kids just love it. This can be read orally or individually. Thank you Brian for giving us such a valuable teaching tool!
Jake
December 3, 2005
A Kid's Review
this made me laugh. i think his ideas are crazy and funny. my teacher said this was good and i think so to. i will read the book again.
Tom
December 2, 2005
A Kid's Review
This book was fun. Patrick does interesting things. He is funny. I like the stories.
McNabb's on solid ground with On Thin Ice
November 30, 2005
Reviewer:R. Bruno "reading addict" (Newark, NJ)
Brian McNabb has given us a very satisfying group of stories, all about a normal boy growing up and making choices about who he wants for friends and about how he should conduct himself in his world of family and school and town. All the stories are told from the point of view of a young narrator between the ages of about 7 and 13. McNabb's talent comes in giving us an authentic voice. We hear a boy, not an adult pretending to be a boy. "Neckbreaker", though awkwardly titled, is my favorite of the stories. As it follows our hero over a period of several months, we see him gain insight into himself and others. It's a lovely rendition of an oft told tale. Much to McNabb's credit, he resists the urge to moralize. The stories are good as stories, they are enjoyable. Well done.
Awesome book!,
October 28, 2005
A Kid's Review
My mom bought me this book. I really liked it. I wish Patrick was a friend of mine. We would have fun.
Summer reading,
August 26, 2006
A Kid's Review
I had to read a book this summer and read this one. I did a book report. It has funny things in it. I liked the story about the gangs and pets best. I don't like reading but this was not boring.
Just what the doctor ordered!,
April 1, 2006
Reviewer:Sheila A. Ward (New England)
-This book is filled with short stories that are very attention grabbing and full of "being a kid" action. The stories teach important lessons incorporating some of the values students have lost. Brian's book is very easy to read and with its intended design, the stories are condensed so to keep the attention of the reader. I believe the reading level is approximately middle school level. It is a wonderful teaching tool and the kids just love it. This can be read orally or individually. Thank you Brian for giving us such a valuable teaching tool!
Jake
December 3, 2005
A Kid's Review
this made me laugh. i think his ideas are crazy and funny. my teacher said this was good and i think so to. i will read the book again.
Tom
December 2, 2005
A Kid's Review
This book was fun. Patrick does interesting things. He is funny. I like the stories.
McNabb's on solid ground with On Thin Ice
November 30, 2005
Reviewer:R. Bruno "reading addict" (Newark, NJ)
Brian McNabb has given us a very satisfying group of stories, all about a normal boy growing up and making choices about who he wants for friends and about how he should conduct himself in his world of family and school and town. All the stories are told from the point of view of a young narrator between the ages of about 7 and 13. McNabb's talent comes in giving us an authentic voice. We hear a boy, not an adult pretending to be a boy. "Neckbreaker", though awkwardly titled, is my favorite of the stories. As it follows our hero over a period of several months, we see him gain insight into himself and others. It's a lovely rendition of an oft told tale. Much to McNabb's credit, he resists the urge to moralize. The stories are good as stories, they are enjoyable. Well done.
Awesome book!,
October 28, 2005
A Kid's Review
My mom bought me this book. I really liked it. I wish Patrick was a friend of mine. We would have fun.