The Hockey Sweater

In the days of Roch’s childhood, winters in the village of Ste. Justine were long. Life centered around school, church, and the hockey rink, and every boy’s hero was Montreal Canadiens hockey legend Maurice Richard. Everyone wore Richard’s number 9. They laced their skates like Richard. They even wore their hair like Richard. When Roch outgrows his cherished Canadiens sweater, his mother writes away for a new one. Much to Roch’s horror, he is sent the blue and white sweater of the rival Toronto Maple Leafs, dreaded and hated foes to his beloved team. How can Roch face the other kids at the rink?

Will Nicholas be able to sift through his mess and find all of his hockey gear in time for practice? Nicholas's room is a disaster area - he doesn't know where anything is. And he still has to get all of his hockey gear together, put it on, eat breakfast and fly out the door in time to make the first practice of the year! Bruno St-Aubin's colourful, amusing and action-filled illustrations perfectly complement the humorous text and will delight readers of all ages. Any parent who has had to hustle a child out the door for hockey will relate to the hunt for each piece of equipment!

This nostalgic tale of a young boy's love for the Toronto Maple Leafs is now available from Scholastic! Journey back to 1976 and meet Michael, who wants to be just like his hero Darryl Sittler, captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs. From his living room perch in front of the television, Michael watches Hockey Night in Canada and dreams of playing for the Leafs. He sets out with his father on a search for a sweater that he can proudly wear on the ice while playing with his friends. He tries every store only to find out they are sold out. He tries one more, at Maple Leaf Gardens, and although they, too, have sold out of the Sittler sweater, Michael's father is able to get tickets to what will be an historic game for the Leafs' captain! As Michael roots Sittler on, he learns that there is much more to the love of hockey than just having the sweater of your favourite player.

In this bestselling timeless classic, Peter Gzowski recounts the 1980-81 season he spent travelling around the NHL circuit with the Edmonton Oilers. These were the days when the young Oilers, led by a teenaged Wayne Gretzky, were poised on the edge of greatness, and about to blaze their way into the record books and the consciousness of a nation. While the story of the early Oilers embodies the book, The Game of Our Lives is much more than a retelling of one season in the life of an NHL team. Unlike any book ever written in the annals of hockey, Gzowski beautifully weaves together the anatomy of a modern NHL team with the magnificent history of the game to create one of the best books about hockey in Canada. Here are the great teams and the great players through the ages—Morenz, Richard, Howe, Orr, Hull—the men whose rare and indefinable genius on the ice exemplified the speed, grit and innovation of the game. The Game of Our Lives is the best book on the Canadian passion for hockey; a wondrously perceptive account of the hold the game has on Canadians. —Jack Granatstein, The National Post

The Hockey Sweater, the title story in this 20-story collection, has become an enduring classic: a Quebec boy and Habs fan is shipped a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater by mistake. It encapsulates everything you need to understand French and English Canada, told with humour and love. This edition features a new introduction.

"A cheeky take on the afterlife brimming with sass, angst, and heart." --Christine Riccio, New York Times bestselling author of Again, but Better. Beatrice Fox deserves to go straight to hell. At least, that's what she believes. Her last day on Earth, she ruined the life of the person she loves most--her little sister, Emmy. So when Bea awakens from a fatal car accident to find herself on an airplane headed who knows where, she's confused, to say the least. Once on the ground, Bea receives some truly harrowing news: she's in purgatory. If she ever wants to catch a flight to heaven, she'll have to help five thousand souls figure out what's keeping them from moving on. But one of Bea's first assignments is Caleb, the boy who caused her accident, and the last person Bea would ever want to send to the pearly gates. And as much as Bea would love to see Caleb suffer for dooming her to a seemingly endless future of eating bad airport food and listening to other people's problems, she can't help but notice that he's kind of cute, and sort of sweet, and that maybe, despite her best efforts, she's totally falling for him. From debut author Gabby Noone comes a darkly hilarious and heartfelt twist on the afterlife about finding second chances, first loves, and new friendships in the most unlikely places.

There are hundreds of thousands of young children enrolled in organized hockey associations all across Canada and nothing is more exciting for these kids than getting that first hockey sweater and playing in their first hockey game. With loads of exciting hockey action, great illustrations, and an entertaining story, young hockey fans everywhere will love to read—or be read— Puckster’s hockey adventures again and again.

French Canadian hockey player Maurice Richard, The Rocket,Ó was the greatest player of his era & he remains an enduring icon of hockey excellence. Fans in Quebec province revered him & enthusiastically followed his matchless accomplishments. This book captures a world in which a brooding, taciturn athlete, who hated to speak publicly & rarely expressed opinions on anything, became a powerful, enduring symbol for French Canadians at a time when they felt painfully vulnerable amid Canada's English majority. The book is also about a young boy, Roch Carrier himself (the author), whose youthful worship of Richard was tempered by politics & personal life, & evolved into an entirely different sort of appreciation for an extraordinary man.