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Readers, it's hot outside.
You do not need your newspaper to announce this, but it's true.
But we are here to help you beat the heat, with ideas for cooling down. Tips for taking the sun in stride. Inspiration to stand up and -- with the help of cool water and a lot of denial -- fight back against those three-digit temperatures.
Let's start with books. Books that will remind you of cold and snow and ice. Because thinking cool is half the battle, we believe -- after all, if the mind goes to a 32-degree place, won't the body follow?
This is not an exact science. We don't know of any real evidence that you can lower your body temperature just by thinking cold thoughts. But if it means we can stretch out with a good book and take a mental break from the July heat, we're more than willing to experiment.
So humor us. Get a big glass of -- oh, say, lemonade. Stretch out in front of the fan or next to the pool. And dip into one of these good books that are set in cold climates -- stories full of driving snow and sheets of ice, parkas and mittens and dangerous blizzards. With luck, you'll remember what it's like to shiver.
But if that doesn't work, put on a tank top and relax. It'll be November soon enough. And then you'll be longing for some warm sunshine.
BOOKS FOR KIDS
For little ones who can't imagine snow
"The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats (Viking, $16.99)
The chilly setting: a snowy wonderland
What it's about: In this 1963 Caldecott Medal winner, a little boy wakes up to discover everything is covered with snow. And of course he plays in it (wouldn't you?) with joyful, bundled-up abandon.
Cold passage: "One winter morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see."
The holiday book worth reading in July
"Polar Express" by Chris Van Allsburg (Houghton Mifflin, $18.95)
The chilly setting: The North Pole
What it's about: It's the ultimate winter dream. As a boy lies awake on Christmas Eve, a magical train swings by and picks him up for a trip to the North Pole. This 1986 Caldecott Medal winner is a holiday book, yes. But we guarantee: even if you're not geared up for mistletoe and caroling, the illustrations of a driving snow on Christmas Eve will put you in the mood for hot chocolate and flannel pajamas.
Small doses for short attention spans
"Once Upon Ice and Other Frozen Poems," a collection selected by Jane Yolen; illustrated by Jason Stemple (Boyds Mills Press; $10.95)
The chilly setting: anywhere icy
What it's about: Yolen enlisted the help of 17 poets -- including X.J. Kennedy and Nancy Willard -- to write poems inspired by cold and ice. The result is a wonderful collection, full of shivers and snaps and other words that conjure up chilly sensations. Photographs by Jason Stemple illustrate the poems, enhancing the words with brittle, icy images. The book's designed for kids ages 9 to 12. (This is a 2003 paperback edition; we also found a few hardcover originals for sale on the Internet.)
BOOKS FOR TEENS
The sweet-as-a-Popsicle chick lit tale
"Amazing Grace" by Megan Shull (Hyperion, $15.99)
The chilly setting: Medicine Hat, Alaska
What it's about: Teen tennis superstar Grace "Ace" Kincaid retires from tennis at 15, desperate for a normal life. And, to avoid the publicity and paparazzi, Grace assumes a new identity and moves to a small town to live incognito in Alaska. The California girl, used to life in a penthouse suite, is now in a remote, icy world where she has to chop wood and boil water. And winter is approaching.
Cold passage: "I am walking to Sadie's with Fisher when the first blizzard rolls in. I feel like I'm inside one of those little globe thingies that people collect as souvenirs -- my world has been shaken and stirred and all of a sudden snow pours down on us like confetti. Fisher is amused at my fascination with the fluffy white stuff. I chase it. I stick my tongue out and taste it. Fisher does, too, mocking me at first, and then falling under the spell of the surreal wonder dust blanketing the earth, our faces, and the tips of our noses."
The book that will transport you
"The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman (Knopf Books for Young Readers, $20)
The chilly setting: England -- and a journey north to the top of the world
What it's about: Maybe you've seen the movie, released last year, about this journey through a fantasy world. With a golden compass as a tool to help her learn the truth, 11-year-old orphan Lyra takes a journey to the far north. She's trying to rescue her kidnapped friend Roger and many other missing children who've been taken there. But along the way, she discovers that her destiny is far greater.
Cold passage: "It took some time before she was used to the movement, and then she felt a wild exhilaration. She was riding a bear! And the Aurora was swaying above them in golden arcs and loops, and all around was the bitter arctic cold and the immense silence of the North."
The book that's probably on your school's summer reading list anyway
"Julie of the Wolves" by Jean Craighead George (HarperCollins, $15.99)
The chilly setting: the Alaskan tundra
What it's about: Miyax, a 13-year-old orphan, leaves her Eskimo village behind, headed for the modern world in San Francisco, where she's known to her pen pal as Julie. She takes off across the tundra alone and soon gets lost in its frigid vastness. But she comes to value the survival skills her heritage has given her, and she does survive -- with the help of a pack of wolves.
Cold passage: "The fox's brown fur of summer was splotched with white patches, reminding Miyax again that winter was coming, for the fur of the fox changes each season to match the color of the land. He would soon be white, like the snow. Before sundown the temperature dropped and Miyax crawled into her sleeping skin early. Hardly had she snuggled down in her furs than a wolf howled to the south."
BOOKS FOR ADULTS
The cold story to read on a hot beach
"Deception Point" by Dan Brown (Atria, $24)
The chilly setting: the Arctic Circle
What it's about: With its government funding at stake, NASA discovers a meteor buried deep in arctic ice that offers proof of life on other planets. Is it real? An intelligence agent and an oceanographer are sent to investigate, and when they express doubt, they become the targets of a shadowy team of assassins who chase them across a deadly cold landscape.
Cold passage: "Instantly, as if a wedge had been driven between the ice shelf and the block of ice supporting them, the cliff began to shear off with a sickening crack. Rachel's eyes locked with Tolland's in a freeze-frame of terror. ... The bottom dropped out. Rachel felt weightless for an instant, hovering over the multimillion-pound block of ice. Then they were riding the iceberg down -- plummeting into the frigid sea."
The story your book club loved
"Smilla's Sense of Snow" by Peter Hoeg (Delta, $15)
The chilly setting: Copenhagen and an icy island off the coast of Greenland
What it's about: When a young neighbor boy dies after falling from a snowy roof, Smilla Jasperson is suspicious. She's an authority on ice and snow, and the child's tracks in the snow say his death wasn't an accident. So she investigates, tracking the truth from Copenhagen to an icy, uninhabitable island off Greenland. Since it was published in the mid-'90s, this story has been an international bestseller and a book club favorite. (It's also a movie, if you're too hot to turn pages.)
The modern-day classic you always meant to read
"The Shipping News" by Annie Proulx (Scribner, $25)
The chilly setting: Newfoundland
What it's about: After his wife's death, a mediocre writer moves with his two daughters from Brooklyn to a harbor town in Newfoundland. As he learns to survive -- and find meaning -- in this new life, the cold landscape is more than just a backdrop. You get a strong sense of just how much this life on the Newfoundland coast depends on the whims of nature. By the way, Proulx won the National Book award and the Pulitzer Prize for this novel; she was onto something.
The book that'll make you grateful for the heat
"Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer (Villard, $26.95)
The chilly setting: Mount Everest
What it's about: In 1996, Krakauer was writing a magazine story when he joined a group expedition to climb Everest. It was supposed to be a routine assignment, but everything went wrong: a sudden snowstorm trapped the climbers near the summit. Several people died on that trip -- including some of the world's best climbers -- but Krakauer lived to tell the story of what happened. "Into Thin Air" is his nonfiction account, and it's haunting.
The winter adventure story
"The Cage" by Audrey Schulman (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $17.95)
The chilly setting: Manitoba
What it's about: Here's a fictional account of a cold expedition gone wrong. When a nature photographer heads to Churchill, Manitoba, to photograph polar bears, she and her colleagues run into trouble. They're stranded in the bone-chilling cold of the Canadian tundra, and they struggle to find ways to work together and survive.
Cold passage: "She thought it was getting colder. They had no thermometer. The smudge of Churchill seemed no closer. If anything, the horizon seemed farther away. The plain of white snow stretched out in front of them, beautiful, sparkling, misleading."
The snowy detective story
"Gorky Park" by Martin Cruz Smith (Random House, $13.95)
The chilly setting: Moscow
What it's about: This famous detective story starts with a triple murder at an amusement park, the bodies found under a "crust of ice." A homicide investigator works to identify the victims and track down their killer, against a backdrop of ice and snow and that inimitable Russian darkness. It was made into a movie, too.
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