Beats and Basketball

Let me preface this by saying I am not a big sports person, nor am I a big poetry person.  I want to be upfront about that because my personal bias is definitely going to show through in this post.

Kwame Alexander's The Crossover is the story of twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan. Though they are only in middle school they love to play hoops and their number one goal is taking their team to championships (I'm trying to use sports language-is it working??).  That is it was their number one goal until girls entered the picture.  Then everything changes. That is until their dad starts having health problems.  Then everything changes...again.

The Crossover is written as a collection of raps (which we all know is a fancy hip term for poems).  This made it very difficult for me to get into the story.  I like a narrative to flow and one of the reasons I don't like poems is, for me, poems seem so segmented.  They feel choppy.  I know not everyone feels this way about poems and some people think they flow beautifully.  So if you're that  kind of person this book is for you.

I do; however, like listening to rap (good wrap with clever lyrics, not sloppy repetitive, cheat rhyming rap).  So I wonder if there was an audio book version of this would I like it more?  Probably, it was a good story.  However, I'm still not a sports person so it would still be difficult for me to relate to the main character.  This would be an excellent book for many of my students.

Coming through in the clutch...that's kids stuff.