The Hockey Card

Reviewed: January 6, 2003
By: Story by Jack Siemiatycki and Avi Slodovnick Art by Doris Barrette
Publisher: Lobster Press
32 Pages, $21.95

In the dim dark days before Pokemon there were sports cards, and what could be more Canadian than a story about hockey cards? Here we have a little story which has the potential to rank right up there with Rock Carrier's "The Hockey Sweater".

Comparisons will be obvious since both stories, each in its own way, celebrate the career of Maurice "the Rocket" Richard.

The narrator is a nameless young boy who loves hockey as much as his father and his Uncle Jack. In fact, the story is Jack's, which he tells to the boy as a bedtime story.

Uncle Jack used to play games with his cards. Not for him the sealed mylar card envelopes of today. No, these boys used to play their cards like marbles, flipping them in games of odds and evens.

Jack's tale is about the great game where he lost almost all of his cards and was then miraculously saved by the Rocket. It's a tale with lots of tension, illustrated in a lively style.

One of the cute tricks in the pictures occurs in the upper left corner of each two page spread. At first there are two hockey cards up there, but as the story progresses they come to life, the players step out of them and play the game along with the boys, moving about the pages as the story continues.

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