For all their abundance, there are roughly two types of hockey-themed kids’ books: those that are steeped in the game – its culture, myths, players, traditions – and those that merely use hockey as a narrative hook. One approach isn’t inherently better than the other, and both have potential pitfalls. Given hockey’s tradition of valuing teamwork, discipline, humility, and self-sacrifice over egos and theatrics, the hockey-steeped book runs the risk of ending up a little too preachy and serious. The book that just happens to involve hockey has a little more freedom to explore other themes, but runs the risk of being too lightweight to be memorable.

Where’s My Hockey Sweater? is a good example of the hockey-hook book, the book that – with some slight tweaking – could have easily been about baseball, soccer, or skateboarding. The story is a quick one, happening one Saturday morning just before young Nicholas’s first hockey practice of the season. Nicholas is a terrifically disorganized kid who spends the entire book scrambling to assemble his hockey gear. His sweater is, obviously, the last to be found. His parents lounge around sleepily, offering their son advice on where to look next and gently chastising him for his sloppiness.

Gilles Tibo and Bruno St-Aubin collaborated previously on 2003’s Too Many Books! (referred to twice, for some reason, on the back cover of this book as Two Many Books!). St-Aubin’s vibrant, perfectly chaotic pencil-and-watercolour illustrations capture the messiness of Nicholas’s morning and make up for the fact that Tibo’s story (or at least Petra Johannson’s translation of it) is not particularly dynamic or stylish. This book isn’t destined to be a classic, but it moves speedily and includes a groaner ending that young readers – whether hockey players or not – will get a kick out of.

Gretzky’s Game, by contrast, is the kind of book that fairly groans under the weight of its own earnest attitude toward hockey. Set in 1984, the year Gretzky’s Oilers first won the Stanley Cup, Gretzky’s Game is the story of Ryan, a young Edmonton boy who worships Gretzky and wants nothing more than to play his idol’s game. Like Gretzky himself, Ryan is smaller than the other players his age and must work harder and play smarter to succeed.

Ryan’s first year on a real team doesn’t work out so well – he spends most of it on the bench – but he trains hard and manages to score a crucial goal in the last game of the season. Soon after that, the Oilers take the Cup, and Ryan redoubles his commitment to the game.

Mike Leonetti has written this kind of thing before (in The Greatest Goal and Number Four, Bobby Orr!), in which he relates a central hockey myth through the perspective of a young boy. Leonetti’s reverence for the game makes for a dry read, which in his previous books was further burdened by often bland and unrealistic illustrations. In Greg Banning, who worked on the Screech Owls series, Leonetti has a more appropriate collaborator. Banning’s realistic drawings and his subtle use of humour draw the reader in whenever Leonetti’s story goes flat. The book’s typography, on the other hand, with its annoyingly small type peppered with annoying LARGE TYPE, makes the story feel like a harder slog than it actually is.

Not quite “for fans only,” this is still not the kind of book that will inspire a non-skater to delve deeper into the game.
FICTION