First Hockey Words

September 1, 2014
Preschool-G If you've got a young one excited about all that zooming around the hockey rinkbut a little confusedhere's an ideal offering. Though presented as fiction, this teaches hockey facts as straightforwardly as any early informational book. Indeed, there are no distinct characters beyond an unspecified purple-and-green-uniformed team of animals, from raccoon to beaver to moose, who take to the ice. Most single- or double-page spreads position a word in a far corner that is then explained by a short sentence in the opposite corner. For example, coach is paired with The coach gives the team a pep talk. Moving more or less chronologically through a game, the book will help readers pick up a lot of sport-specific terminology, including such potential head-scratchers as Zamboni machine, face-off, winger, line change, and power play. Grth's primary-colored, thick-lined art doesn't leave a lot of room for clearly defined action, and there's no concluding glossary, but still this does the (hat?) trick.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)