word of the day: glissade
Miss Bianca and Bernard of the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society have come to Antarctica on a mission but they are now prisoners themselves. A polar bear cub (don’t ask) has built a snow castle around them.
As is well known, mice can run up almost anything — Hickory-dickory-dock, a mouse ran up a clock — but the snowflaky interior of the castle walls crumbled into particles under even Bernard’s and Miss Bianca’s minuscule weight: the most Bernard achieved was about three inches before he came tumbling back, and Miss Bianca (half his size), barely four ere she more elegantly glissaded, but still back.
define (dictionary.com): a skillful glide over snow or ice in descending a mountain, as on skis or a toboggan.
The mice need a better plan of escape.
source:
Miss Bianca in the Antarctic
by Margery Sharp
illustrated by Erik Blegveld
1971. Little, Brown & Co., Boston MA
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