The companion volume to our bestselling, Blue Spruce Award winner, Z is for Zamboni: A Hockey Alphabet. Like our alphabet series our counting books are written in a two-tier format with charming poems for young readers and expository text for older readers. Young sports fans see numbers everywhere--the scoreboard, the retired jerseys in the rafters, the numerology of sports stats--and Hat Tricks Count: A Hockey Number Book delivers them faster than an assist from the Great One, number 99 himself. Hat Tricks Count will answer many of the fast paced questions kids have. What is a Hat Trick, anyway? Cross checking, high sticking, and hooking penalties add up to what? Who scored more career goals--Gordie Howe or Wayne Gretzky?

Chicago native Brad Herzog’s first published story was the tale of his brief stint as a big league bat boy. He has watched the Cubs play from the box seats, the bleachers, the press box, even the Wrigleyville rooftops. Among his numerous books for Sleeping Bear Press are baseball books—H is for Home Run, Full Count, Little Baseball, I Spy With My Little Eye Baseball, and W is for Wrigley: The Friendly Confines Alphabet. A multiple winner from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, Brad has written dozens of other books about subjects ranging from soccer and small-town America to civil rights and saving the planet. He now lives on California’s Monterey Peninsula with his wife, but visits schools around the country as a guest author, inspiring students about the joys of reading and writing and the possibilities of imagination.



Illustrator: Melanie Rose

Melanie Rose's charming and lively oil paintings brought Canada vividly to life in Mike Ulmer's M is for Maple: A Canadian Alphabet. She has also illustrated Z is for Zamboni: A Hockey Alphabet and K is for Kick: A Soccer Alphabet. A graduate of the Ontario College of Art, Melanie lives in Mississauga, Canada, with her son.