The Ice Castle: An Adventure in Music

The return to Lexicon begins when thirteen-year-old cousins Ivan and Daphne find their Aunt Adelaide deathly ill. Leaving their aunt to rest, Ivan and Daphne accidentally let their younger cousin, Lila, in on their secret world of Lexicon.

Ivan and Daphne must track Lila, who disappears, through the frozen landscape to the Land of Winter where social status and freedom are determined by how well one sings. Fortunately for Lila, her musical talent lands her in the most favorable place. Separated by class now, the cousins face cold, hunger, poverty, illness, injustice, and the malicious plotting of a power-hungry blind man. Slave, servant, and fine lady, the three cousins must escape their own imprisonment before they reunite, provoke a revolution, and restore spring to the Land of Winter.

Pendred (Penny) Noyce is a doctor, education reformer, and writer. She grew up in Silicon Valley, California, surrounded by apricot orchards and fields of mustard. Along with her brother and sisters, she rode ponies, put on plays, and explored the rapidly changing countryside.

As an adult, Noyce has practiced internal medicine, supervised medical residents, and become a leader in Massachusetts mathematics and science education reform. She serves on a number of nonprofit boards, including that of the Noyce Foundation, and she chairs the boards of Maine’s Libra Foundation and the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy. She loves to give talks to teachers and kids. Noyce is married with five children who all love to read, travel, ski, and seek out adventures. She has yet to visit Australia and Antarctica. She lives in the western suburbs of Boston with the parts of her family that haven’t already grown up.

Joan Charles lives in Santa Monica, California. As a child she put on plays and puppet shows, wrote and illustrated a family newspaper, and played endless games of Parcheesi with her sisters on rainy summer days. Her favorite thing to do was draw and make up stories, and that’s still true today.