The Crossover: A Newbery Award Winner (The Crossover Series)

WOW oh WOW. When a book hits a sweet spot, it zooms from one student to another. As soon as I read the opening lines of The Crossover, with its basketball cover and bouncing rap beat, I just knew I had to read it aloud to my 5th graders. But nothing prepared me for how it hooked them. To say they are loving it is an understatement. Fifth grade boys are just about wrestling each other to see who's going to get it next--jostling each other over a novel in verse!For Josh Bell, basketball and his family are everything to him. He pushes himself to excel, but he loves every minute he spends with the game--especially the way he plays it with his twin brother Jordan and his dad. Kwame Alexander captures Josh's voice and the power of basketball in a way that comes alive for my students. They love the rhythm and pulsing movement, the attitude and sass in Josh's words.The power of this novel comes not only from Alexander's language but also from the characters and their emotions. As Josh and Jordan (JB) near the championship playoffs for their school's division, friction develops between the brothers and trouble is brewing with their father. Josh starts to resent the fact that JB is spending too much time with his new girlfriend. I love the relationship Josh has with his dad. They tease each other, push each other, question each other in a way that feels so real.Alexander engages kids on so many different levels. I especially like the Basketball Rules that Josh's dad shares with his sons. How is basketball like life? That's something all sorts of kids can think about, in a way that takes layered meanings to a different level.Our whole class is having a blast reading this aloud. I am projecting my Kindle version on the screen so we can see the words dance on the page as I read it aloud. I want to try to create some audio recordings with kids reading it, because I know they'll bring so much to it. We already have four copies at school and the books are bouncing from one kid to another.

From the start, the Crossover by Kwame Alexander, shows off its spin moves and keeps readers entertained with creative language like, “Straight in the hole: Swoooooooooooosh”. Josh and J.B., 12-year-old twin brothers are at the center of the story and are learning to work together in basketball and life.At the beginning, the boys get really mad at each other whenever they have to do something together because they feel like they always have to be together since they are twins. One example is that Josh and J.B. don’t like passing to each other in basketball.Josh and J.B. feel like real people that kids can relate to. The boys act like real kids throughout the book. They do things like Play Madden, take tests, and get in trouble with their mom.In the middle of the book, Josh and J.B are shooting free throws. J.B. makes 41 in a row and Josh doesn’t make any. Their Dad says, “Josh, J.B is putting on a free throw clinic,” which makes Josh upset. This shows how competitive the boys are and how much they care about basketball. Both of these things, middle school readers are able to identify with.The fast-paced free verse and hip-hop poetry continues to wow readers throughout the book. The boys continue to grow and learn new things about themselves and their relationship to each other. In the end, the boys learn to work together to win their basketball game and appreciate each other.Readers can learn to follow Josh’s Basketball Rules of life as they enjoy the Crossover. The rules include Basketball Rule #1 which is, “In the game of life your family is the court and the ball is your heart. No matter how good you are, no matter how down you get, always leave your heart on the court.”The Crossover is a fantastic book that middle school kids will enjoy! A great read!

My 11 year old brother has this thing about reading to where he doesn’t like it. Well, he likes this one. 17 pages in and he’s raging about it. I didn’t realize it was a poetry book, but if my brother likes it I love it. I’m looking forward to getting him the entire series and finding similar books/plots to this one, which I wouldn’t know anything about because I have not read this book. Don’t tell him that though. I kind of lied and said I did.

I admit that I initially got this book because of two factors: one is that the author is a Virginia resident and the second is that the Kindle price was incredibly cheap, something that was likely done because the book won a Newbery Award. It's not a particularly long novel, but it's short length works in its favor because this is an exceedingly powerful book.The entire work is told in verse and it's beautifully done, as Alexander takes full advantage of the format to craft visually lovely free verse that truly leaps off the page. It's a book that's very much meant to be viewed, although part of me is curious to listen to the audiobook so I can experience how the narrator interpreted various portions of the book. What ultimately works best here is that the characters are all believable and best of all, there are no "bad guys" here. Even though we're really only given the perspective of one of the two brothers, it will be very easy for readers of all ages to interpret how either brother is feeling at almost any given point of the book- an element that I'm sure is going to be the focus of many, many school lectures.I can easily see this book becoming a staple of multiple classrooms and for good reason. It's amazingly well crafted and even better- it's fiction that will appeal to any age and any gender. This book deals with a lot of difficult topics, from growing up to family issues to various different things that just about every child will deal with when they're young and I whole heartedly recommend that parents read this book as well and discuss it with their children and heck, maybe even make up a few verses for themselves.

It had parts written in rap. Overall, she didn't enjoy it.

Was ok

Grandson (10) loved the book

Amazing read!

Great book