Who's DA MAN? The Crossover: The Graphic Novel by Kwame Alexander

JB AND I
are almost thirteen.

TWINS, two BASKETBALL
GOALS, at opposite ends
of the COURT.

I'm an inch taller with
DREADS to my NECK.

He gets his head SHAVED
once a MONTH.

I want to go to DUKE.
He flaunts
CAROLINA BLUE.

If we didn't LOVE each other
We'd HATE each other.

Basketball and competition run in the Bell Family. Famous locally as an international basketball star, his dad, know as "Da Man," Chuck Bell boasts that he "balled with Magic Johnson." The dreadlocked Josh goes for the flying slam dunk, and Jordan is the cool crossover shooter who makes all the threes. Together Josh and Jordan take their team to the playoffs for the championship game, but their unconcealed rivalry leads to a bet in which Josh forfeits his dreads and like Samson, fears he's lost his mojo.

And as the rivalry proceeds, Josh and Jordan find that they like the same girl, Alexis in the pink sneakers, but she chooses the fast-talking Jordan. Angry, Josh smolders until in the playoff his jealousy reaches the tipping point.

The crowd is screaming,
PASS THE BALL!

I see Jordan.
You want it that BAD?
HERE YA GO!

I pass it so hard it levels him, the BLOOD
from his NOSE still
SHOOTING long after the
shot-clock buzzer goes off.

Josh is suspended from the team, and still angry, he bets his dad, Da Man, that he can beat him in a quick one-on-one. Dad gets competitive, goes for a high-flying dunk, and collapses with a heart attack, foreshadowed by symptoms he's been keeping from the family.

The ball is passed to Josh and Jordan in a way they both didn't quite see coming.

Now who's going to have to be DA MAN?

In his new adaption of his 2015 Newbery Award winner, The Crossover (Graphic Novel) (The Crossover Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), Alexander's 2017 Newbery Award winner is a natural for a graphic novel. Author Alexander brilliantly makes the crossover and proves that he can rebound, too, in this powerful reexamination of what it means to have GAME. Alexander's writing in this graphic revisioning of his free-verse best-selling novel is equally powerful in its examination of the bravado up-and-down sides of the winning-is-all mystique, as he reworks his poetry into smart dialogue which heightens the conflict between the twins' competition as mirrored by their on-the-court conflict. The Emmy-winning artist Dawud Anyabwile's dramatic and insightful graphic art gives the story a flow which heightens the conflict inherent in this sports metaphor, making this almost mythic tale of rival fathers and sons accessible to a whole new audience for his earlier The Crossover (The Crossover Series) (see review here)

As I called it the first time--another SLAM DUNK for Kwame Christopher.

Other riveting middle-reader novels by Kwame Alexander include his novel about the twins' father's eighth-grade school days, Rebound (The Crossover Series) and the soccer novel Booked (The Crossover Series).