Glory On Ice, A Vampire Hockey Story

As a kid, I was an avid reader, maybe voracious is a better adjective. I would read anything and everything. Along the way I developed a fondness for illustrations and drawings and eventually illustrated books.

That was more an outgrowth of being introduced to cartoons by my father as a kid.

So, I jumped at the opportunity to review two new children’s books, both illustrated, and both focused on hockey.

Glory on Ice is the first to hit our pages here; it is authored by Maureen Fergus and features a story of a Transylvania vampire.

A bored vampire, with lots of money and nothing to do.

The vampire, Vlad, eventually finds a thing to relieve his boredom, hockey!

After centuries of being alone, but not without a flat screen television, Vlad finds his passion in the local town’s hockey program for “little human beings”.

Glory on Ice is wonderfully illustrated by Mark Fearing who makes the character of Vlad pop from the story and pages of the book.

Fearing’s illustrations complement Fergus’ story line and fill in some of Vlad’s edges as a lonely, centuries-old vampire. His cape is as ubiquitous as the smile that shows on Vlad’s face even when lying prone on the ice after another fall.

There are also little nuggets for the reader, including Vlad’s cat and Team Transylvania’s logo. You need to get the book to find those.

But it’s Fergus’ introduction of Vlad as the lonely vampire and his metamorphosis as a hockey player as he kneels for the team photo at the end and is as a big as the little human beings he skated with.

Glory on Ice seems to bump up against a story of redemption, but Vlad is not really in need of being redeemed. He is a character in need of contact and hockey provides the “pounding and crushing” contact as well as the human contact.