Hockey Book Reviews.com

Author Mike Leonetti is back with his line of hockey history books aimed at children. In 2009 he has teamed up once again with illustrator Greg Banning to bring us The Rocket , the story of Maurice Richard. Buy the book: | Amazon.ca - Chapters - Amazon.com | The book is also available in Canada in French: | Amazon.ca - Chapters | Previous history-themed children's titles by Leonetti include Wendel and The Great One , Maple Leafs A-Z , Gretzky's Game , The Greatest Goal , The Goalie Mask , Number Four, Bobby Orr! , A Hero Named Howe and My Leafs Sweater . I am always impressed that publishers take a chance on a children's series devoted to hockey players from decades ago. But clearly the series is a success. You better make room for another hit on your bookshelves, because Leonetti's magic is in full force in The Rocket. Leonetti tells the story of Rocket Richard through an aspiring young hockey player named Andre. Andre loves the Rocket, and he loves to play hocke...

Canada Reads has announced its list of books and panelists for the upcoming competition in 2009. Canada Reads is a CBC radio annual contest where they determine one book each year that every Canadian supposedly will enjoy. In 2008, a hockey book, of sorts, won. Paul Quarrington's King Leary , defended in the competition by hockey writer/musician Dave Bidini, is a novel about a legendary retired ice hockey player living in a nursing home. The novel replays his life in flash backs as he journeys to Toronto to record a ginger ale commercial. Past winners include Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill, A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, Rockbound by Frank Parker Day, The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe, Next Episode by Jean-Louis Major, In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Odaatje. Quarrington's book was the first hockey book ever nominated in 7 years of this competition. No hockey books were nominated for the 2009 competition. Instead, we will find a winne...

Roch Carrier is a successful novelist and playwright but he is famous (and undoubtedly rich!) for his quintessential children's hockey book The Hockey Sweater . But if you ask me, his most important title has to be Our Life With The Rocket: The Maurice Richard Story . This book is neither a biography nor a memoir of Quebec's greatest hockey player. No in fact it is in many ways a thoroughly researched and infectiously proud all grown up version of The Hockey Sweater. It's about what it was like to be French Canadian at a time when the Rocket was hockey's most dynamic player. In many ways it is more a story of Carrier's youth than Rocket's exploits. But Carrier's youth is mirrored by countless other Quebecers who experienced the same social and political circumstances. Richard was the bigger-than-life albeit inadvertent super hero who came to symbolize Quebecers plight. This is what the back of the book says: "Roch Carrier captures a world in which a bro...