That's Hockey

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Bouchard and Griffiths combine words and illustrations to delightfully
deceive readers, who have only their gender-based preconceptions to
blame for being fooled.

Two young cousins, Etienne (aka ET) and the book’s unnamed narrator,
are spending the weekend at ET’s parents’ farm, where both are
looking forward to playing hockey. The hockey they play is of the road
variety, with the puck being replaced by a ball, and the goalposts
consisting of rocks, chunks of snow, or pieces of clothing. After the
cousins and local kids play all day, ET, lacking money to purchase a
Christmas gift, gives his cousin his old Montreal Canadiens sweater. In
the last double-page spread, author and illustrator spring their
surprise. The entire story has consisted of a past event, and the
present finds the narrator, now a mother, passing ET’s sweater on to
her daughter so that she, too, can play street hockey.

Rereading the story will cause readers to recognize the provided clues.
The major time-period hint was the fact that every road hockey player
was wearing Rocket Richard’s #9 Canadiens jersey. Bouchard cleverly
masked the narrator’s gender by avoiding giving her name or using a
gendered pronoun to refer to her. Additionally, Griffiths never once, in
all of his rough-and-tumble illustrations of the game, provides a
full-face head shot of the narrator. Finally, ET had asked the guys’
permission for his cousin to play hockey with them, a request that
acquires greater significance when the narrator’s gender is known.
Highly recommended.