Children's Books

Excerpted from full article

A is for Axel, by Kurt Browning, illustrated by Melanie Rose, Sleeping Bear Press, 40 pages, $23.95, ages 4 to 10

Kurt Browning, a world figure-skating champion four times over, was the first figure skater to be crowned as Canada's outstanding male athlete. He's a member of Canada's Sports Hall of Fame and he has a slot in the Guinness Book of Records by virtue of having completed the first quadruple jump in competition. All that and this, too: a book in rhyme about skating that won't make Browning Canada's next poet laureate, but one that nevertheless offers evidence of a pleasing dexterity with words at the same time as it delivers a wealth of information about the world on ice.

First and foremost, this is, as the title indicates, an abecedarium, with skating and skating paraphernalia as its medium. Melanie Rose's rich oils capture a wide spectrum of ice activity, from small children tying up the laces on their skates ("L is for Laces,/ that hold our skates tight./ Sometimes we need help/ to make them feel right") to polished performers performing quad jumps -- there's the Q for you.

Sidebars, though, tell another story (alphabetically ordered, of course): the history of the Axel jump, single, double and triple versions; plastic versus leather boots; and the role of coaches in group lessons for beginners as well as in teaching individual skaters to jump and spin. The letters M, N, O and P have sidebars that go deep into skating territory, with disquisitions on a skater's choice of music, the need for safety as well as practice, the Olympics and pairs skating, respectively.