2015 Newbery winner, The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, is a free verse novel about two African American middle-school, basketball-loving, twin brothers. They are sons of a semi-pro player who had a career in Italy, (Evan tells me this is reminiscent of Kobe Bryant who grew up partially in Italy when his father played there), but his career was cut short by injury. On and off the court, the brothers compete against and with each other, struggling to work together as team and family in the face of romance and stardom and possibilities of making it big.
What I liked and was interesting. The language and the art of the poetry in this book is part rap, part spoken word, part free verse. The artistry of the language was the most impressive part of the book.
What was interesting was the graphic design layout of the words, enlarging and dropping them down to mimic the movement of the ball, or using font size, boldness, or italics to emphasize the cadence and rhythm of the speaker. I didn’t listen to the audiobook, but I imagine it was powerful (after a quick listen to the sample, it struck me that the narrator chose to read it slower than I imagined it in my mind, probably to make sure that you could catch every word). The whole effect was to give the protagonist-narrator a very distinctive voice and the novel a very immersive experience.
What were some limitations. This is going to have a number of big spoilers in it, so fair warning, skip this section before you read the book.
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The part of the book that frustrated me the most was the refusal of the father to go see a doctor about his heart. One of the things that the book did was to point out how good of parents Josh and Jordan had, and their father was about to have a heart attack on every other page, but just refused to go to a doctor. Obviously, he had the heart attack, that wasn’t a particularly big surprise with all the foreshadowing. But (again big spoiler) that he had a second heart attack shortly there after and died was honestly a big surprise that I didn’t see coming, and I didn’t particularly like it. (I mean you are not supposed to like it when a protagonist’s beloved father dies.) What was honestly the most surprising to me was when in his obituary they mentioned that the dad was 39. 39! That’s only a couple of years older than me! And I realized with some horror that I had been ignoring my own weird chest tightenings that were happening more and more frequently throughout the Fall. So partially spurred by this book, I went to my doctor. And one EKG and one echocardiogram later, I am happy report that everything with my heart came back normal. And I also had a lot less judgement for Josh and Jordan’s dad putting off going to the doctor. (Although he still should have. PSA go to the doctor with chest pain.)
Similarity to other Newbery winners. In its free verse form, it’s most similar to Out of the Dust. In terms of a sports-obsessed, tension with his parents, middle school boy protagonist, it shares that with Dead End in Norvelt and Onion John (although those were both about baseball). Maniac Magee has a lot of athleticism in it as well, and a lot of themes of race, and what it means to be a young African American man (something that Holes, Bud, Not Buddy, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Slave Dancer, M. C. Higgins, the Great, Sounder, and Amos Fortune, Free Man do as well.) But The Crossover does seem to capture more of contemporary urban African American basketball culture in a way that no Newbery has really even mentioned before.
It felt to me more similar to recent, big YA books like The Hate U Give and Long Way Down. They are both excellent, but for older readers than The Crossover. Interestingly, while I was reading it, I felt like the issues and responses that protagonist Josh had to deal with as a 12 year old felt too old for him, especially his ruptured relationship with his brother. It felt like something that might happen mid to late high school, more like 16 or 17 dealing with a brother in love and obsessed with a girl friend. Although both brothers are both kind of immature about it, so perhaps that fits. In comparison to what the protagonists in The Hate U Give and Long Way Down deal with, The Crossover does seem more suited to middle grade, and it has decidedly less language than those two. But compared to many of the other Newberies (although not all), the protagonist’s problems seemed really more teenaged to me.
What it teaches me as a writer. I think that the tone and maturity level of the character particularly interested me because I am writing a book in which my protagonist is 12. And I’ve heard a general thought that your target audience is two years younger than the protagonist, at least when it comes to children’s or middle grade genre. (Adults write books with young protagonists for adults all the time. ) And at least on the Amazon page, it lists the reading age 10-12, and a couple of teachers left reviews saying their fourth grade boys loved the book. Perhaps I am conservative with what I think kids can handle when, thinking that most good books have a right and wrong time to be put in someone’s hands. Or perhaps I am starting to under-estimate what it’s like to be 12, what you think about and how old you feel when you are in 7th grade. I think overall it encourages me to give my own protagonist more feelings and bigger thoughts. Or maybe it means that I need to spend more time with middle schoolers to get a sense of what their world really is like and how much they feel like the heroes of their stories.
Have you read The Crossover? What are your favorite free verse novels?
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