The Big Book of Icebreakers: Quick, Fun Activities for Energizing Meetings and Workshops

The Big Book of Ice Breakers by Edie West is a very informative and fun look at ice breakers and how they are used. I read this book for a class project and to be honest, I'm glad that I did. The book describes in detail an array of ice breakers that can be used in the professional setting. The one downfall that I would have liked to have seen presented in the text is a little bit of a better understanding as to why these ice breakers are so important. For example, it would have been nice to see a few real life stories added in to demonstrate some of the results. It would have also been beneficial to demonstrate a few ice breakers that didn't pan out as had been planned in order to give the reader a sense of what to expect. I feel that this book is something that many professional adults should read and familiarize themselves with in order to make the atmosphere of the hectic workplace a little bit more comfortable and enjoyable. There is no such thing as all work and no play. Therefore, I believe just as West does that ice breakers are not a necessity, but they are definitely needed. This book gives descriptive plans on how to execute correct and beneficial ice breakers both indoors and outdoors. While, I had at first believed that the book was only going to cover ice breakers having to do with a professional atmosphere there are also a few ice breakers that refer to just simple everyday living. Therefore, basically anyone could benefit from reading this book. While all of the ice breakers are likely to work in a majority of situations, my favorite one is #50 You Are What You Read. This is because it is basically an activity to show that assumptions about people are not always correct and it is quite possible to have more in common with someone than you may think. Overall, this is an informative book and I recommend it to anyone wishing to "break the ice."

This book is good for anyone that needs to get a bunch of people to talk amongst themselves. I use it with my job at a college in NY and it works quite well.

Don't know why this is here as I never purchased this item.

My first observation on this book is that it is focused on the large group not the small group. However, the rationale for some of the large group focus seems to flow entirely from a preoccupation with dividing large groups into smaller groups and then applying tasks or games to these subgroups. If you have never thought about working with groups this book may be of some use, but by and large I judged many of the examples were impractical in terms of the time and resources needed to get deploy them.

My key reservation about these icebreaker books is that they are written more to help the presenter break the ice rather than any presumed intra-audience barriers.

This book is packed with icebreakers, but I personally wouldn't use most of them. They border on the "touchy-feely" side, and will only work if your audience is open to that type of activity.