Description
For fifty years the animals on Stolski's farm have played their hearts out for the Stolski Cup --- the dream of every hockey team all over the northland. And every year the Farm Team has lost to the nastiest, smelliest, snarlingest bunch of varmints ever to don skates --- the Bush League Bandits.
As soon as the puck drops for this year's playoff game, the Bandits, playing as dirty as ever, take an early lead. A Bandit porcupine named Needles starts ramming Farm Team players, while the weasels slash and spear. But the Farm Team's goalie Big George blocks some tough shots, while Billy the goat and Vera the goose net three goals to tie things up. Then the Bandits bring in a bruiser of a substitute player so big and mean that these plucky underdogs could be in for a serious mauling.
From the award-winning team of Linda Bailey and Bill Slavin and packed with on-ice action and laughs, this is the picture book hockey fans of every age have been waiting for.
Author Bio
Multiple award winning illustrator Bill Slavin was born in Belleville, Ontario. He studied Cartooning and Graphic Story Illustration at Sheridan College. His illustration work includes Paulette Bourgeois' book, Too Many Chickens! as well as a number of other children's books. With his wife, Esperança Melo, he was a member of the Millbrook Gallery, a gallery collective of nineteen local artists in Millbrook, ON. Recently, he has returned to his childhood love of comics and graphic novels, writing and illustrating the graphic novel trilogy for kids, Elephants Never Forget, as well as the Mordecai Crow trilogy. Mordecai Crow is his first book with Renegade Arts Entertainment.
Prizes
- Blue Spruce Award, Ontario Library AssociationShort-listed 2008
- Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book AwardShort-listed 2007
- Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's AwardShort-listed 2007
- Chocolate Lily Book AwardShort-listed 2007
- Best Bets - Top 10 Canadian Children's Books, Ontario Library AssociationWinner 2006
Review Quotes
Young hockey fans will be thrilled with this offering, which will appeal to sports fans and animal lovers in kindergarten through second grade, as well as the adults who read aloud to them.
— ForeWord
The surprise ending will bring cheers form the crowd as they ask for repeated readings.
— School Library Journal
A sassy, well-crafted story... the mostly full-page illustrations are packed with little details that will amuse children and adults alike, ... Bailey and Slavin have produced a gem of a picture book that will remain popular for as long as hockey underdogs continue to compete for Lord Stanley's famed cup.
— Quill & Quire, Starred Review
Slavin's goofy acrylics playfully realize the joyful mayhem of shinny, and Bailey's story gets the competitive burn just right, even if for a bunch of chickens, sheep and piglets.
— Kirkus
Bailey's story reads aloud well, while Slavin's artwork captures its drama and humor in a series of action-filled acrylic paintings... Every child who has watched a bigger, brawnier opposing team take the field will feel for the plucky Farm Team.
— Booklist
