They twitch, cry, croak, and groan the way Icy does. Participants receive the Holy Spirit and start acting strangely. However, this ritual changes Icy’s life forever. It is a holy and divine ritual, and Icy is terrified that she will ruin it. During the ceremony, people welcome the Holy Spirit into their bodies. One day, she is invited to watch a ceremony.
Sparks notes free#
Icy spends her free time with the congregation, learning about God. The religious community is a welcoming place. When the medical community lets her down, Icy turns to religion, and Matanni joins her. Icy vows to do everything she can to find a cure. She fears that Icy will never marry and will be alone forever.
Matanni despairs because Icy still can’t look after herself. Icy’s grandparents grow older, and her grandfather eventually dies. She is worried that she will offend people in town and end up back in the mental institution. She encourages Icy to go out, meet people, and stop dwelling on her condition, but Icy is too scared. Matanni, on the other hand, tries to help her. Icy’s grandfather doesn’t trust her, and she feels like a burden. She has no friends and she doesn’t speak to anyone other than her grandparents. She doesn’t leave the house and she doesn’t return to school. When Icy leaves the hospital, things are never the same at home. The staff convinces Icy’s grandparents to let her return home. She suspects that Icy needs different care, and that hospital is only going to make her worse. Eventually, one of the hospital nurses takes pity on her. She is terrified, especially because the hospital staff bullies and harasses her, but her grandparents won’t let her come home. She doesn’t need medication, and she misses her community. Although she knows she is not like other people, she knows she doesn’t belong in a mental institution.
Sparks notes professional#
They admit her to an asylum for professional help.Īt the asylum, Icy feels lonelier and stranger than ever. Frantic, Icy’s grandparents take desperate measures. Her teachers isolate her from the other students, and her only friend is an obese woman who runs a local store. Icy knows there is something wrong with her but she has nowhere to turn for help. She learns to control the worst of her tics and let them out when she is alone. Icy hides in the cellar every day to vent and shout. What the community sees is only half the problem. What they don’t know is how hard Icy tries to hide her condition from everyone. They worry about what is going to happen to her when they die. She croaks and makes strange noises her grandparents assume she is crazy. Assuming she is rude and evil, some townsfolk don’t want their children hanging out with her. No one understands her, and her grandparents can’t figure out what is wrong with her. She makes rude comments all the time, and her muscles and eyes twitch frequently. In Icy’s community of Poplar Holler, she is an anomaly. She knows that it is rude, but she can’t stop the words leaving her mouth. The comment comes from nowhere and Icy can’t stop herself. When Matanni asks Icy what she’s staring at, Icy comments on Matanni’s upper lip hair. She tenses up, staring across the breakfast table at her grandmother, Matanni. Eating breakfast on a Saturday morning, she starts blinking uncontrollably. The book opens just after Icy’s tenth birthday. Although she misses her parents, she is happy and well-adjusted. Icy wishes she could remember parents who died when she was a baby. Ten-year-old Icy Sparks lives in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky with her grandparents. Icy Sparks is Rubio’s most popular novel. She wrote for ten years before Icy Sparks, her debut novel, was published. Rubio served in the Peace Corps and taught in Costa Rica for many years. Receiving an overwhelmingly positive critical response upon its publication, the New York Times named it a Notable Book and it was selected for Oprah’s Book Club in 2001. Icy Sparks (1998), a novel by Gwyn Hyman Rubio, follows a young girl growing up in a rural community where no one understands her because she suffers from Tourette’s syndrome.
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