Ben and Lucy Play Pond Hockey
"Ben and Lucy Play Pond Hockey" by Andrew Sherburne, illustrated by Kevin Cannon (Beaver's Pond Press, $17.95): Author Sherburne, who divides his time between Iowa City and the Twin Cities, says he learned to skate under the "dim floodlights of Dunning field" in St. Paul. Illustrator Cannon, who runs the Minneapolis-based cartooning studio Big Time Attic, provided hockey illustrations for the documentary film "Forgotten Miracle: The Story of the 1960 Gold Medal Team," produced by Sherburne. They've put their love for hockey into this story, enhanced by big, colorful illustrations and a minimum of rhyming text: "What fun Ben and Lucy have had at the park,/Now it's time to go home,/the sky's getting dark." A timely book for the months when kids often need to be coaxed to go outside and get some exercise. - --MaryAnn Grossman, Pioneer Press