Double-Teaming: The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

OH-H-H-H-H-H-H!
Houston, we have a problem!
I catch him
and slap
the ball on the glass.
Ever seen anything like that from a seventh-grader?
Didn't think so!
Me and JB are stars in the making.
The Rockets full-court-press me.
But I get it across the line just in time.
Ten seconds left.
I pass the ball to JB.
They double-team him in a hurry--don't want to give
him an easy three.
Five seconds left.
JB lobs the ball.
I rise like a Learjet--
seventh-graders aren't supposed to dunk.
But guess what?
SLAM!

Who's Da Man?

Josh and Jordan Bell are twins and the stars of their middle-school team and the pride of their dad, who played with Michael Jordan until an injury knocked him out of the NBA draft, Josh is an inch taller, can dunk when he's not doing his signature slashing crossover to set up his famous three-pointer, and sports long dreadlocks until Jordan wins a free-throw-shooting bet and the chance to whack them off.

On court Jordan shoots free throws at will, sports a shaved head, and specializes in trash-talking, but he switches to sweet-talking when a new girl in pink Converses shows up at the rec center to shoot with the others. Josh is drawn to her, too, but the easy-talking JB beats his time with Alexis, as Josh simmers on the sidelines.

But the two are almost unbeatable together on the floor as their team works their way toward the county finals. But underneath the teamwork, Josh still stews about the haircut and about his brother's fast moves with the new girl.  Now Jordan's got a girlfriend. Heck, even team goofball Vonnie's got a girlfriend.  Josh's anger finally flashes on court when he makes a pass to his brother that almost breaks JB's nose. Then JB passes a note to Josh to hand to Alexis during a math test, and when he's caught with it, Josh has to take the rap for his brother. The coach benches him, which is bad enough, but his mom, who is also the vice-principal, suspends him for the regular season from the team, and Josh has to do hard time from the stands as his brother become the superstar, taking the team to the finals, and with a swagger he leads Alexis to the team's table in the cafeteria every day while Josh eats alone.

DEAR JORDAN

without u

i am empty

the goal

with no net

i can no longer fit.

can you

slash with me

like we used to?

like two stars

stealing sun

like two brothers....

And then, as his mom has feared, something happens inside their dad.  He wouldn't go to the doctor, and then he's in the hospital.  Josh and Jordan  push through their rivalry, but still they show their love for their dad in different ways. Mom texts Josh as he decides to play in the final game:

Dad's having complications
But he's gonna be fine
and says
Good luck tonight.
Jordan says
he still doesn't feel like
playing, but I made him
go to the game to show
support. Look for him and
don't get lazy on your

crossover.

The title of Kwame Alexander's forthcoming The Crossover (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) is triply apt, a metaphor for a basketball move, for the coming-of-age premise of the novel, and a description of the author's unique style, a hard-driving sports story told solely in poetic form.  Despite the novelty of the narrative, Alexander's blank verse is dramatic, sometimes lyrical, sometimes falling into the rhythm of speech which skillfully delineates all of the strong characters in this novel, giving all of them their own voices. This is a powerful story of two emerging young men and their parents at a crossover point in their lives, one that uses basketball brilliantly to tell their story, but one in which winning the big game is not the end of the story, an ending which will leave readers a bit shaken and yet satisfied.  Watch for this one to take some honors in the awards for books debuting this year, because it's definitely got game--on-court suspense, real-life characters, and a moving narrative that confronts life changes with all the right moves.  Slam-dunk!

Breakout Game: Swagger by Carl Deuker

I carried the envelope to the kitchen table and carefully opened it. Inside was a color brochure and a letter. The photos were similar to the ones I'd seen on their website: ivy creeping up the side of old brick buildings, white snow blanketing a winter landscape. I took a deep breath and then read the letter from Coach Richter. He liked what he saw of me on the DVD. He thought I could be his guy.

That was the good part. The not-so-good part took up the rest of the letter.

"I'm going to be straight with you, Jonas. Your academic record worries me.There is another high school point guard with whom I'm in contact. You have the edge on the basketball court; he has the edge in the classroom. You will need to complete your current junior-year classes with a minimum 3.0 point average: Chemistry, Algebra II, Language Arts, Social Studies, Spanish. You will need to score at least five hundred on each section of the SAT. I do not need to tell you that this is a much more difficult course of study than you have undertaken in the past. It is up to you."

Jonas Dolan's life has been a slam dunk up to the end of his sophomore year. He was starting point guard on Redwood High's basketball team, and academically he had easily skinned by with Cs and Ds, just making eligibility. But when his coach suggests that he could play scholarship Division 2 basketball, his mindset suddenly changes.

But to add to the challenge, Jonas's father has to take a job in Seattle and Jonas finds himself trying out with a team that plays a different sort of basketball, one in which his skills as a fast-break player are not valued. In his late sixties, Knecht coaches old school basketball, ball-control, run-out-the-clock, and defense-oriented, and uses Jonas only to provide his starter guard Brindle with a few minutes of breathing time. Jonas makes a good friend in a tall, religious forward, Levi, and he finds some support in the new assistant, Coach Hartwell, who prefers Jonas' style of ball and had mentored him in pickup games over the summer, but he knows that unless he gets more minutes and more impressive stats to send to the coach at Monitor College, he can kiss his hopes of playing Division B ball goodbye.

And then there's Mr. Butler's chemistry class. Jonas finds he can make Bs in his other courses if he works hard, but chemistry seems impossible. Confiding his fears to Hartwell, Jonas is astonished when his coach takes him to an old computer in a little used workroom.

The computer took forever to load but once it did, the screen filled with folder icons, each with a different teacher's name on it. Hartwell slid the mouse to me. "Double-click on Butler's." My heart raced. Everything was there. The lab assignments, the quizzes, the tests, the answer keys.

Hartwell said, "Jonas, I don't condone cheating, but a bad teacher like Butler--he's the real cheater. He's cheating you out of your chance for a college education."

At last Hartwell patted me on the shoulder. "I'm going to leave. If you want, you can e-mail these files to yourself."

With his worries about his chemistry grades taken care of, Jonas' only worry is getting the minutes and stats he needs to win the Monitor scholarship.  Then one day in practice, Coach Knecht, who usually remains seated off court during practice, steps out onto the court just as Coach Hartwell is running down the sideline following a fast break.  In the collision Coach Knecht suffers a broken hip  and Hartwell takes over the team, and playing his fast-break, free-wheeling game, Jonas becomes the starter and team finds themselves winning themselves into the state finals.

But then his friend Levi confides that Coach Hartwell has made sexual advances with him, and Jonas realizes that his coach has unethically manipulated him and everyone else in his plan to take over the team and win the state championship. And when the kind and gentle Levi takes his own life, Jonas sees that he has some hard decisions to make.

Much more than a fast-paced game-play novel (which it is), Carl Deuker's forthcoming Swagger, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) deals with the hard choices that come with taking short cuts to success. For young adult fans of sports fiction, this one offers a look at high school sports with a wider lens that the usual fare, in which a hard-driving, fast-break style on court turns out not to be the best path to a making good choices in life. When Jonas finally understands Hartwell's ruthless approach to achieving his desires, he begins to look outside the court at other goals.

One for the Team: Mason Dixon--Basketball Disasters by Claudia Mills

Mason took the first spoonful of his Cheerios and milk.

"Um, Mom and Dad?" Mason said. He tried to keep his tone light and casual. "I was thinking that I might go out for basketball this year."

His mother found her voice first. "But, Mason...."

But, Mason?

"You've always said you're not a sports person!"

If there was anything that was irritating, it was hearing quotes from your previous self.

Mason Dixon is a Cheerios and milk, plain tee shirt and brown socks kind of guy. And he really has no burning desire to play basketball. But his best friend Brody needs a ride if he is going to play basketball, and Brody, who has hustle, easily talks Mason into enlisting his gung-ho parents in the idea. "Believe me, this is going to be great," Mason tells them, trying to copy Brody's enthusiastic tone.

Down at the Y, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that perennial class bully Dunk is not on his team. The bad news is that his mom volunteers his dad to be the coach when no one else offers to do it. Dad is now Coach Dan. Weird.

Mason's dad admits he know little about basketball and zilch about coaching it, but true to form, he cheerfully orders a book on how to coach online, and spends the weekend boning up on good coaching techniques. Mason knows that this is going to be a basketball disaster. After all, Dad has only read the first three chapters, now embarrassingly adorned with sticky notes, as they meet for the first practice. He tells the team seriously that they are going to learn to win with grace and lose with dignity.

Mason is relieved to see that he is not potentially the worst player. A kid named Dylan has that position nailed. Dylan is so afraid of the ball that he dodges any passes that come his way and drifts around the court trying to stay as far away from the floor action as he can. Mason is pretty sure that the the "losing with dignity" part of Coach Dan's pep talk is the one that the Fighting Bulldogs are going to get plenty of chances to practice.

It's a big season for Mason Dixon in Claudia Mills' third book in this series, Mason Dixon: Basketball Disasters (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012). Mason learns about being part of a team, one which features three girls, including his second-best friend, Nora, finally scores his first goal in a game, survives his first sports injury, and gets to make the pass which leads to his team's beating Dunk's team in the final game.

With gentle humor and great insight into her likeable middle graders, Mills takes her wry and reluctant main character Mason another step forward in this noteworthy series, perfectly pitched just one notch above beginning chapter book level, for its target readers. Kirkus Reviews concludes, "Altogether, this is an amusing if undemanding account of the typical fourth-grade problems the athletically ungifted face as they make their way through school."

Preceding books in this series are Mason Dixon: Pet Disasters and Mason Dixon: Fourth-Grade Disasters.

Going for It: Front and Center by Catherine Murdock

That's the thing. When I said that it sure felt good to be going back to school, I didn't mean just going to school. I meant having everything go back to the way it used to be. The way it's always been. With D.J. Schwenk in the background, just like always. In the background where I belong.

But instead, it was the exact total opposite. Instead of being a nobody, now I was front and center.

And let me tell you something. Front and center sucks.

Front and Center (Houghton Mifflin, 2009), the long-awaited sequel to Catherine Murdock's best-selling Dairy Queen (review posted here August 7, 2007) and sequel The Off Season reviewed here, finds D. J. Schwenk in a quandary. She's got what she wanted. She's back home after two hard months coaching her partially paralyzed brother Win into giving life another chance after a catastrophic game injury; she's recovered from her own shoulder separation in football and is ready to concentrate on snagging a basketball scholarship, as her mom puts it, as "the only way out of Red Bend;" and she's sure she's put all thoughts of onetime boyfriend Brian Nelson behind her:

I was done with all that boyfriend crap. Finished with the 24/7 Brian Nelson cable station that had been running nonstop inside my skull since July. No more feeling like I was some fluttery girl who doesn't have anything better to do all day long than think about her boyfriend. Because I did have better things to think about, thank you very much, because I am not the kind of girl who has boyfriends.

But when the conveniently tall Beaner Halstaad asks her on an actual date, D.J. reconsiders. Beaner is a basketball player, too, funny, comfortable in his own skin, and popular with everyone, even teachers, a kid who has the knack for smoothing over D.J.'s shyness and making her feel at home with anyone as long as he's around. He's the perfect boyfriend substitute, except that she can't talk to him about what really bothers her like she could with Brian, not to mention that there's no thrill, even when he kisses her.

Guy problems aside, though, D.J.'s big problem is with the expectations of her coach, her classmates, and her brother Win, who's made her scholarship with a Division III school the focus of his rehabilitation. A college football superstar before his accident, Win has an in with all the Big Ten coaches, and D.J. finds herself deluged with letters from all over, from Wisconsin to San Diego to little St. Margaret's College, and as Red Bend's team takes the court, she is horrified to discover scouts in the stands and a coach who expects her to take charge of the team on the court. Schwenks are anything but talkers, and the best D.J. can bring herself to do is to mutter quick instructions to Kari, her mouthpiece point guard, on the fly during a game.

A visit to a University of Minnesota game doesn't help, as D.J. watches a player she knows miss two foul shots and lose the game in front of ten thousand fans. She's angry at Win's constant meddling, and her coach's constant pressure. She knows she can't handle being front and center in that bigtime arena, and, fearing to fail everyone's hopes for her, D.J. takes refuge in her resolution to take any scholarship she can get to a lowly Division III school.

I already knew I was a loser. Someone who didn't measure up, not when the pressure was on. Now it was just a matter of everyone else figuring it out.

Oh, wouldn't that be fun.

Slowly, though, D.J. realizes that this is her game to play. Taking charge of her fears, taking charge of the Red Bend team, and taking charge of the rest of her life is--as the season nears an end--squarely on her own strong shoulders. She digs deep, pulling up an alter ego whom she nicknames Darey, to speak for her on the court, and when that begins to work for her in the game, D.J. finds her own voice--to break up with Beaner, to make the call to Brian Nelson and begin again with him, and to make that call to the Division I coach and take the chance of being the best player D.J. Schwenk can be. To herself, she admits that her brother was right to push.

Win, you say I saved your life. Well, you didn't save mine; you got me one. You've found me a better life than I ever imagined I deserved.

Critics and readers alike have rejoiced at the honest, authentic voice of Murdock's main character, so unlike the hyper-sophisticated heroines of many teen novels. Tall and strong, strong enough from her dairy chores to arm wrestle most potential boyfriends to the ground, D.J. offers up her frank but funny confessions about what it feels like to be a different kind of girl heroine, winning the love of readers of all ages. It will be hard for fans to say goodbye to D.J. Schwenk, if indeed this is the last we hear from that wonderful "Dairy Queen."

In the meantime, for readers there's Murdock's funny femme fairy tale/fantasy novel, Princess Ben: Being a Wholly Truthful Account of her Various Discoveries and Misadventures, Recounted to the Best of her Recollection, in Four Parts.

Tough Moves: I Smell Like Ham by Betty Hicks

Still grieving for his mother's death, middle-schooler Nick Kimble throws himself into trying out for the sixth-grade basketball team, a feat which is not made easy by his friend Carson, who always manages to steal the ball when he drives. Still, things are not so bad. Nick gets along with his dad just fine and manages to hold his own with his edgy friends, who are always willing to tease anyone who's vulnerable.

Then Nick's dad remarries and things get touchy at home, too. His new stepmother is all right, and she seems like a good cook until she veers into tofu and something that sounds like "porta-potty burgers." Then, to complicate his social life, she buys organic clove shampoo that makes Nick's hair smell like a glazed ham. But the biggest problem is her dorky, nerdy, wimpy eight-year-old son, Dwayne. It's embarrassing enough when Nick is forced to take Duh-wayne out on Halloween, but when Carson dares the group to smoke cigarettes in his tree house, poor Dwayne pukes all over Nick, and Nick has to suffer through the next day with jokes like "What's up, Chuck?"

But when Carson is grounded for his Halloween pranks, Nick gets the chance to start their team's next game in his place. With his usual bad timing, Dwayne picks that day to run away, and when he figures out where he must be hiding, Nick has to cut the big game to go out and find him. Nick learns that juggling family and team responsibilities is a new version of ball handling harder than he could have imagined.

Betty Hicks finds the right balance of Nick's inner life and his school persona in I Smell Like Ham. Despite its frequent laughs and easy-going guy banter, this is a serious book about learning how to live in a blended family and learning how to make it through the trials of early adolescence.

Too Short to Make the Shot: Salt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream by Deloris Jordan

In his playing days, at six foot six, Michael Jordan cast a very long shadow over the game of basketball, but few of his fans know that he was once too short to make his neighborhood team. His mom remembers, though, and Deloris Jordan, with the help of Michael's sister Roslyn, tells the true family story of a star who was once too short to make the shot in Salt in His Shoes.

When hazing by an taller, older kid sends Michael home with a case of basketball blues, he confesses to his mother that he is afraid he'll never grow into his dreams of being a great player. Mama Deloris tells him to put salt in his shoes, say his prayers, and give it time. After four months of patience, practice, and plenty of salt, Michael hasn't grown an inch and completely loses heart. This time Daddy steps in and reminds Michael that practice, determination, and giving his best is what will make him a winner.

Michael decides to give his dad's advice another shot and hurries off to watch the neighborhood team play at the park. With their game already in progress, an injury to a player gives Michael a chance to come in near the end of the game. Confronting the bully, Michael confidently fakes him off and scores the winning goal "right over the tall guy's head." Although he was to grow plenty of inches in his high school years, Jordan never was the tallest guy on the court, but following his parents' advice, he became the biggest star in basketball.

Deloris Jordan's text reads true, and Kadir Nelson's illustrations of Michael in despair and in action tell the story of one little boy's real growth spurt on the way to becoming a man.

No Place Like Hoops for the Holidays: Miracle on 49th Street by Mike Lupica

Mike Lupica, best-selling author of the blockbuster sports novels Heat and Travel Team, takes a break from his trademark game-play story lines in this family-centered novel which fittingly ends under the giant Rockefeller Center tree on Christmas Day.

Molly Parker is still grieving the death by cancer of her mother Jen and homesick for their life together in London. Living with her mom's oldest friend's family in Boston, Molly has a best friend in classmate Sam, and as she adapts to her new situation, Sam is the only person to whom she confides that Boston Celtic mega-star Josh Cameron is her biological father. Even Josh does not know Molly is her daughter because Jen broke off with him when they were college students and never returned from a year abroad in England.

Armed with personal anecdotes and her mother's letters written as she was dying, Molly uses Sam's help to sneak into Josh Cameron's SUV and grab an opportunity to reveal her story in private. Hurt by Josh's assumption that she is shaking him down for money, Molly hangs tough in her efforts to convince him of the truth of her story. Gradually he takes an interest in her and invites her to practice sessions, games, and visits at his apartment where she gains an ally in his sympathetic housekeeper Mattie, who sees a resemblance in her looks and in her natural skill at basketball.

But when Molly misunderstands a hard-edged conversation between Josh and his money-minded agent Bobby, who advises Josh to keep Molly hidden in boarding school until his lucrative career is over, Molly feels that there will never be any love or hope of a real relationship with Josh as her father.

To Josh Molly pretends to be happy about her foster family's upcoming move to Los Angeles, but a sudden resolve to give her father one last chance takes her to New York City on Christmas Day, hoping that Josh will remember his meeting with her mother at Rockefeller Center thirteen years earlier. As she waits there, surrounded by skaters and celebrating families, she knows that it's Josh Cameron's last shot in this game.

With a strong sense of the Boston setting and details of big-time NBA play, Miracle on 49th Street makes a satisfying holiday read for sports fans as well as readers who crave a story of family love lost and found.

A New York Daily News columnist, Lupica is a real pro in the arena of sports fiction for middle readers. His realistic game-play action, strong characterization, and natural dialogue make his books first choice for the young sports fans on anyone's Christmas list.

In addition to Travel Team, and its equally engaging sequel Summer Ball, (reviewed here November 17), Lupica's first book in his Comeback Kids series is another game action packed basketball novel, Hot Hand: Mike Lupica's Comeback Kids

Guy Sports: Edenville Owls by Robert B. Parker

Edgar winner Robert B. Parker (of the Spenser, Sunny Randall, and Jesse Stone mystery series) has set his first novel for young readers in the immediate post-World War II era, a time which mirrors the forces which eighth grader Bobby Murphy feels moving within his own life. In 1946 America is on the brink of major transition, as the country shifts from wartime frugality to major consumerism. Jackie Robinson is being groomed to be the first Black major league baseball player, white supremacists are organizing against the changes that returning minority soldiers expect, and women, important players in the wartime job market, are conflicted about their postwar roles. Into this setting Parker puts young Bobby, who has a growing awareness of both girls and what it means to be an honorable man.

As school begins, Bobby and his buddies have just organized a basketball team which has named themselves the Edenville Owls. Bobby and his friends like their pretty new teacher, Claudia Delaney, but when Bobby sees someone angrily shoving her in the parking lot, he feels compelled to find out if the man poses a real threat to her safety. However, when he approaches Miss Delaney to offer help, she asks him to stay out of the matter and swears him to secrecy.

When Bobby observes evidence that the stalker has physically abused his teacher, he confides the story to his teammates and to old friend Joanie Gibson, who immediately offers to help him uncover the story behind their teacher's problem. One evening Joannie and Bobby hide in Claudia Delaney's attic and overhear the man strike her and threaten to take away her child, and Bobby follows the man to a makeshift church and is appalled to hear him teaching young boys a doctrine of hatred for Jews and African Americans. In a call to the Veteran's Administration, Joanie manages to find out that the man is actually a wartime deserter who has assumed a dead soldier's identity, information which Bobby, Joanie, and the other boys finally use to scare off the abuser for good.

Parker intersperses the detective work with some rousing basketball scenes in which the Edenville Owls, self-coached and hitchhiking rides to their games, rise to the regional junior playoffs. Bobby is a believable character as he navigates the shoals of adolescence, trying to lead his struggling basketball team, learning how to manage rivalry with his best friend Nick over the girl they both like, and figuring out when the means justify the end as he tries to rescue his teacher from a bad situation. Parker throws in some brief background chapters which flesh out life in 1946 with details which may intrigue older readers while causing young readers to do some speed reading to get back to the plot.

Still, Parker's uncanny ability to create strong atmosphere in the sparest of prose and dialogue should appeal to young readers who like to see the story keep moving. Having got his feet wet in the junior novel waters, perhaps Parker will follow Carl Hiaasen and other masters of the mystery/detective genre in writing for middle readers.

Girl Sports: Swish! by Bill Martin, Jr. and Michael Sampson

As fast-moving as a video clip from News at Eleven's sports segment, Bill Martin, Jr.'s Swish! drops us right down into the last thrill-packed moments of the playoff game with the score at Blue Jays, 44, Cardinals 42, as a winning trip to the Women's Hall of Fame Museum hangs in the balance.

Michael Chesworth's illustrations of the game play are equally videographic, with the perspective zooming from a wide angle view of the whole court to a shot from behind the basket as Kim misses her layup and then to a shoelace shot from the floor as Marie drives downcourt to get off a jump shot from the post. Chesworth's final two-page spread shows all players in a hold-your-breath moment as Cindi's game-winning three pointer hangs in the air above the basket. B-ball doesn't get any better than this!

Bill Martin, known far and wide for his classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, holds his own in breathless short-phrased rhymes in a picture book which conveys the essence of basketball action, whether it's played by lanky middle-school girls or hulking NFL superstars.