My Left Skate: The Extraordinary Story of Eliezer Sherbatov
by Anna Rosner
Yellow Dog / Great Plains Publications, 2022
ISBN 978-1-77337-087-3 (sc)
$18.95, 112 pp, ages 12+
greatplains.mb.ca
Toronto writer Anna Rosner has chronicled the exciting life of a Montreal- based hockey player who has overcome a permanent disability to play the game around the world. Born to Russian Jewish emigrants who fled to Israel in 1991, Eliezer moved with his family as a toddler to Quebec. Here he developed a love for hockey, and amazingly, at the age of just thirteen, he played for the Israeli national team at the 2005 Under 18 World Championships. A rollerblading accident soon afterwards, however, led to a lifelong disability involving nerve damage to his left leg. While the injury ultimately ended his NHL dreams, it did not prevent him from playing in Quebec’s elite junior league and pursuing a professional hockey career in Europe. Starting in Paris, Sherbatov later signed on with teams in Latvia, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, and Poland, and once again represented Israel in the 2019 world championships. The final part of the book deals with his last professional stint, in Ukraine, where in February 2022, Eliezer found himself suddenly fleeing a Russian invasion.
Classroom Connections: My Left Skate can be purchased in print and an ebook version and is available in French as well. Anna Rosner has utilized a series of extensive interviews to create a short work that would appeal to many intermediate students. It is a biography littered with both humorous and harrowing anecdotes involving poverty, discrimination, and migration, but above all, it showcases the values of family support and perseverance.
Review by George Sheppard.
This review is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Winter 2023 issue.
