Dad's Magic Ice Cube: 7

"A hundred days, Buddy. Not one glass."Every night Dad sits in his big brown chair with a tall glass and a giant ice cube. He says the cube is magic. Some people get drunk, but he only gets smarter.His child isn't so sure. There is the laughing that shakes the bedroom wall, the yelling at the TV, the morning Dad is still asleep in the chair, and the thing in the laundry bin nobody talks about. Then one morning Mom is on her knees beside the chair, asking Dad to get help.Dad goes to a meeting. He comes home and says the hardest sentence out loud. He explains what the ice cube really is, and what he has to find instead. He promises a sorry, one day, when he's ready. And on the night the ice goes down the sink, there is a coin with the number 100 on it and a high-five that hurts in the best way.Told in a child's voice with warm line-art illustrations, Dad's Magic Ice Cube is a tender, honest story about a parent's drinking, the first days of recovery, and a family that makes room for the truth. A two-paragraph note for grown-ups explains alcoholism as a disease, what meetings and amends are, and where families can find support.The seventh book in the Dad's Mental Health series. For reading together, ages 4 to 8.