Hockey Mom

Julie Bertuzzi, the wife of NHL player Todd Bertuzzi and Hockey Mom extraordinaire, presents us with twenty hilarious portraits of the Hockey Moms we know and love. The perfect gift book for all seasons. Straight-shooting, observant, and uproarious, Julie Bertuzzi's Hockey Moms is an irreverent look at the many kinds of moms you are sure to find in the ice rinks, on the road, and in the hotel bars at tournaments across this hockey-loving continent. While always applauding the dedication of moms who support their players -- at early morning practices and on long drives to and from tournaments, in the triumph of a big win and the heartache of a big loss -- Bertuzzi pokes fun at herself and her fellow Hockey Moms, and brings alive the many characters she has observed during her years of experience as a Hockey Mom herself. Whether it's Big Mouth Betty shrieking from the stands, the Drama Queen stirring up trouble in the bar after a tournament game, Team Manager Mom with her clipboard and team jacket, the Yodeler, or the Leaner, readers will recognize and delight in these familiar profiles. This is a quick, funny read and a must-have book for Hockey Moms, and those who love them, everywhere.

After spending most of their parents' money on hockey fees and equipment, and after waking the house up at 6 am for countless early morning practices—isn't it only right that these kids give an expression of thanks and love (and a whole lot of laughs) to their parents? These books do just that. They were created as an opportunity for a Novice Rep Hockey Team, a little group of 8 year-old puck chasers, to express their feelings about their moms and dads, to tell them what they think for a change. The reasons they give are honest, funny, and true—all that you would expect from a group of 8-year olds! Asked why he loves his hockey mom, one answers without hesitating: “because she always skips out on work for it.” Why does his dad deserve thanks—not for the endless offside drills?—no, more for “distracting me while I am trying to play.” And their illustrations, done with crayons and markers, are simply charming.

Hockey Moms... if we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? (Besides Soccer Moms!) This book pays tribute to Hockey Moms everywhere with hilarious illustrations, jokes and stories - including contributions from Hockey Moms and hockey greats, like Mike Eruzione! Finally, a book that gives us the credit we deserve! (Well, okay, our kids deserve a little credit, too.)

As a single mother, and deadly operative, Tanya knows she can’t screw up. So, explain how she ended up in his bed. A teenage pregnancy left Tanya struggling to survive with a baby. Fast forward years later and she’s established herself as a first-class hacker, working for an elite agency—with benefits. Life is good, and being a secret agent doesn’t stop her from driving her son to compete in a hockey tournament happening in Quebec. What’s not so good is finding Cory’s father there. A man everyone thought dead. Who thinks he can rekindle things with a smile. It will take more than that for Tanya to forgive, especially considering she’s fighting a temptation to kill. How dare Antoine think he can walk back into her life? And how will she explain his reappearance to their son? It would be easier to shoot him, but she can’t, which means, Bad Boy Inc. operative Devon isn’t allowed to shoot him either. Speaking of, why is Devon at the ski resort anyway? Tanya doesn’t believe for one minute that he’s on holiday, and when he needs her to pretend to be his girlfriend for a top-secret mission, she finds it only too easy to imagine the role becoming real. But when her son goes missing, this hockey mom has to put aside passion and romance and remember who she is: a killer mom who won’t let anyone hurt her baby. Genre: romantic suspense, thriller suspense, contemporary romance, action and adventure, single mom romance

When four-year-old Conner starts pleading for hockey skates, his mother's dreamy fantasies of après ski's toasty fires, charming chalets, and chilled chardonnay rapidly evaporate. Soon, Astra reluctantly raises the white flag to the culture of hockey, and life becomes a whirlwind of early morning alarms, minivans stuffed with massive amounts of goalie equipment, ice-cold arenas, and appalling nutrition. Offside by a Mile - Confessions of a Hockey Mom, chronicles the frantic and frequently hilarious challenges of one family's fourteen-year odyssey into the world of minor hockey. The universal challenges, joys, and sorrows of supporting childhood passions at the cost of home-decorating ambitions, healthy diet avowals, personal time, gobs of money, full-nights' sleep, or any sort of downtime or personal freedom will be recognizable to parents everywhere. But with its wickedly frank and funny perspectives, Offside by a Mile offers a bubbly and refreshing tonic for it all....

A biography of Sarah Palin, Alaska's first elected female governor, describing her childhood and family life, and sharing highlights of her political career, which began in the early 1990's when she was elected to the city council of Wasilla.

The author of the Canada Reads–nominated The Bone Cage tackles the ups and downs of amateur hockey, from a mother’s point of view Over 570,000 people are registered in Hockey Canada and over 600,000 in Hockey USA. It’s a national obsession. But what does that really mean when your child wants to play on a team? As a former varsity athlete and university instructor teaching sport literature, novelist Angie Abdou is no stranger to sport obsession, but she finds herself conflicted when faced with the reality of the struggles, joys, and strains of having a child in amateur hockey. In Home Ice, with equal parts humour and anguish, Abdou charts a full season of life as an Atom-level hockey mom, from summer hockey camp to the end-of-season tournament. Her revealing stories and careful research on issues such as cost, gender bias, concussion, and family pressures offer a compellingly honest and complex insider’s view of parenting today’s young athlete in a competitive and high-pressure culture.

Drawing on decades of combined experience in hockey at all levels, Ken Campbell and Jim Parcels pull back the curtain on hockey to show just how far our national game has strayed from its roots. What they reveal is a system driven by unrealistic expectations of a financial windfall, where minor-hockey fees and new sticks for kids are deemed “investments”— and where there is no shortage of entrepreneurs more than happy to take money from starry-eyed parents. Always informative, often shocking, Selling the Dream is not only a guidebook for legions of hockey parents across the country, its a defence of the game we all love, and of childhood itself.