The Crossover

Bibliography
Alexander, Kwame. The Crossover. Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2014.
image from: personal photo

Summary (from amazon.com)

"With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . .The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I’m delivering," announces dread-locked, 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he's got mad beats, too, that tell his family's story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood from Kwame Alexander.

Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story's heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family.

My Thoughts
I'm reading this for the Book Love Foundation summer book club.  I was excited to see this one on the list because I wanted to read it (I've seen the author at TLA), but since the main character is 13 years old, I don't have it in my library. (I'm not sure high school students want to read about younger kids).

The book club gave me a deadline to reading it instead of letting it pile on my "one day" list. The book club discussion points gave me some interesting things to look at with Alexander's writing style as well as some ideas if I were to use this book in the classroom.

Now that I've read it, I can say that I enjoyed it, and I might put it in my library after all.  This is a basketball story, but it's also a "life lessons" story. I like the novel in verse format that Alexander uses. I could visually see the ball bouncing on the court through the word placement. I felt the intensity of the game clock counting down to the last seconds. The emotions of the narrator are visual on the page. I also felt the story was honest.

I like the basketball lessons sprinkled throughout the book. Narrator Josh titled them Basketball, but they really are the life lessons or affirmations that his dad tries to teach. I also liked that Alexander uses words or expressions that might not be familiar to a 13 year old, defines it and uses it in the next poem.

I enjoyed the musical connections (and took time to listen to Horace Silver's "Filthy McNasty" song and Beethoven's "5th").

I smiled when I saw how the title was used in three different ways in the story. It is a basketball term, an explanation of life and in the very last line of the book (no spoilers here---but the moment is poignant).

Several times, Alexander uses a split poem, meaning that you can read it all together or you can read down one column and then read down the next column. When I came to pages like this, I read it both ways.

The book is divided by quarters, like a basketball game.