Everyone’s been talking about hockey this week, with the announcement of our Olympic team lineup. If you’re kid is starting to catch the spirit, try these two new additions to the Puckster series!
Puckster’s First Hockey Tryout (978 1 77049 596 8)
Puckster Goes to the Olympics (978 1 77049 594 4)
by Lorna Schultz Nicholson, Fenn/Tundra Books
The Puckster series are cartoon-illustrated picture books about a hockey-playing polar bear and his friends/teammates. They are aimed young, which is nice for parents of young hockey fans, who have had little offered to them so far. Like most series and books written to fill a neglected niche, they are written in a pretty straightforward, simple fashion – we are not looking at future award-winners, but at a fun, simple approach that will make the right kid very happy.
In the first book, Puckster and his teammates are trying out for a team – and only a few of them make it. Some of them make mistakes that lead to their elimination, and advice on success is offered, but in some cases, they simply aren’t quite ready for the team. Still, they are supportive friends when the announcements are made, modeling good sportsmanship. I like that not everyone is making it, and the atmosphere at the end is idealized, perhaps, but a nice way to wrap it up and allow for talking about success and being a good sport.
In the second book, we follow along with Puckster as he goes to the Olympics with Team Canada as their stick boy. We get to see the experience of traveling, team practice, and the roller coaster of winning and losing throughout the series. In the final game, a last minute twist sees him hit the ice with the team, which is loaded with big-name Canadian hockey players. Not necessarily realistic, but this story is as much about the way dreams can come true as it is about the more mundane experience of going to the games as a supporter.
As much as these are perhaps not groundbreaking, they are a great fit for kids like my friends son, who will be getting copies of these next time I see him!
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