Fishing on Thin Ice

by Art Coulson, Johanna Tarkela (Illustrator)

Jimmy Benge is excited to celebrate his thirteenth birthday with an ice fishing adventure in northern Minnesota. He's even allowed to invite his best friend, Ryan, to spend winter break at the family's lakeside home. The two boys learn a lot about ice fishing and catch a few panfish but decide to fish for something Northern pike, the alpha predators of the lake. The trip is fun until one day, while out fishing by themselves, the boys are hit by a sudden, unexpected snowstorm and find themselves fishing on thin ice.

72 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2022

About the author

Art Coulson is a writer of Cherokee, English and Dutch descent. The 2023 McKnight Fellow in Children’s Literature and a 2025 Millay Arts Fellow, Art is the author of 20 books, graphic novels and plays, including All the Stars in the Sky, winner of the 2026 Minnesota Book Award, Chasing Bigfoot and Look, Grandma! Ni, Elisi!, which was featured on Reading Rainbow and translated into Cherokee for use in his tribe’s immersion school. He is also author of The Creator’s Game: A Story of Baaga’adowe/Lacrosse, Unstoppable: How Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Defeated the Army, The Reluctant Storyteller, Lure of the Lake, Trophy Buck, Fishing on Thin Ice and Pheasant Hunting Firsts. Art has been a teaching artist for All My Relations Arts, the Loft Literary Center and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Art splits his time between his house in the Twin Cities and his lake cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.

Reviews

[Erin Field · Rating 5 out of 5]

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