The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier

Here in Michigan, home of Hockeytown, we take our hockey seriously. That is why we can relate so well to The Hockey Sweater. Roch, a schoolboy in Quebec, idolizes and wears the same red, white, and blue hockey sweater as his hero, Montreal Canadiens star player Maurice “The Rocket” Richard, as do all the other boys in the village. When he outgrows his beloved Montreal Canadiens sweater and his mother orders a new one, he is horrified when he receives a blue and white sweater of the despised Toronto Maple Leafs. Feeling left out and snubbed by everyone in the village, he loses his temper and is advised to go to church and ask for forgiveness. Read The Hockey Sweater and find out what Roch asks for at church. You are guaranteed to smile.

Honus & Me by Dan Gutman

For a long while, Joe Stoshack has known there was something special about baseball cards. There's a sort of tingle in his fingers whenever he touches one. It doesn't happen with football cards or basketball cards, or plain old pieces of cardboard - he's checked. Nope, there's something special about baseball cards.

And he just found out what it is.

When old Miss Young - she's over a hundred, but she lives all alone in the house next to Joe and his mom - hires Joe to clean out her attic for $5, she tells him to just throw everything out. He tries not to groan about how much stuff there is as he lugs it all out to the curb - until suddenly one of the boxes breaks and Joe comes face to face with one of the most priceless baseball cards in history - that of Honus "Hans" Wagner.

Suddenly, Joe's got a big dilemma on his hands. He could give the card back to Miss Young - who did tell him to throw everything out and who did say she had no use for money... Or he could keep it, sell it, get $500,000 for it, and bring his family back together. If his parents don't have to fight about money anymore, they don't have to be divorced anymore, do they?

Things only get more complicated when Joe wakes up to find Honus sitting beside his bed, ready to tell him about honesty, being the only ballplayer in 1909 who refused to have his card printed because he thought smoking was bad for kids, and most importantly, baseball.

Cat Running by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Fast Cat Kinsley, the fastest runner at Brownwood School. She took first in the Play Day races last year, even though she was only a short skinny fifth-grader then. But she beat out all the boys, even the sixth-grade ones, from Lincoln and Elmwood too.

Cat loves running. It makes her feel free, the way her legs burn and her lungs ache and everything seems to kind of fade away. She can forget about bossy Ellen and teasing Cliff, about frail Mama and stern Father, about the fact that she won't be running in the Play Day races this year...

And that's all Father's fault, and he'd better know it. Every other girl at school will be wearing slacks for Play Day, but Cat will be stuck in a dress, because Father is too old-fashioned and too stubborn and won't pay a dime for anything Cat wants. Won't he feel guilty when Brownwood loses the games and don't get the prize money to buy new gloves and bats for the kids to play with.

But Browntown School does win, and all because of That Zane Perkins. He's a newcomer to school, one of the Okies who set up camp down by Mr. Otis' farm looking for work after the great dust storms out in Oklahoma and Texas chased them out of their homes. He wears shirts and overalls that are patched and worn and too big or too small, and he runs the Play Day races barefoot! Cat's refusing to run because she'd have to wear a dress instead of slacks, and that Zane Perkins runs it barefoot, like he doesn't know any better!

Cat hates that Zane Perkins. She'll hate him 'til the day she dies.

But she doesn't hate little Sammy Perkins. And when Sammy needs them, Cat just might have to team up with that Zane Perkins in a race against time itself...