Clancy with the Puck.

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.

While adults might recognize in Clancy with the Puck some character, content, and rhythm parallels to Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s 1888 classic poem, “Casey at the Bat,” such similarities will likely be overlooked by most young readers.

In a two-on, two-out, 4–2 game, Casey had been expected not only to drive in the tying runs but to win the baseball game via a home run. The expectation placed on Clancy, the hockey league’s leading scorer, by his teammates and hopeful fans was that, with four seconds remaining in the third period of game seven of the Stanley Cup finals, Clancy would, via a penalty shot, score the tying goal, thereby sending the game into overtime and giving the Hogtown Maple Buds another opportunity to win the Cup. Like the overly self-confident Casey, Clancy also fails. Now retired, Clancy can still be found on the ice at the rink, but he’s there as the Zamboni driver.

Author and illustrator Mizzoni, who is also an animator and Toronto Maple Leafs fan, has included a bonus DVD with this appealing picture book. In the almost five-minute animated short, the book’s text, consisting of quatrains with an abcb rhyme scheme, is narrated by famed hockey commentator Bob Cole. Potentially, the DVD could overshadow the book simply because the medium, which integrates the cartoon-like characters’ movements with sound effects, better suits the book’s subject matter. Whereas baseball is an essentially static game, with moments of frantic action, hockey is a sport that is almost always in motion. Recommended.