Quick Reads: The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Bibliographic Data

Alexander, Kwame. The Crossover. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Print.

Summary

Josh and his twin brother Jordan are stars on their middle school basketball team when things start to change. Jordan gets his first girlfriend and becomes almost nonexistent, and their dad starts showing signs of the same heart disease their grandfather died from. Written in free verse and hip-hop poetry, we follow their journey to the championship game.

Critical Analysis

This is a great, boy friendly, quick read, will be great for students that say they “don’t like to read.” Through the fast paced writing students will get brought into Josh and Jordan’s world and they won’t look back. Broken into 6 sections: Warm Up, First-Fourth Quarter, and Overtime, you get a peek into the changing family dynamic, and how the family will react to the changes. One particularly strong point is some of the chapters are written with the text changing size, font, direction, etc. that makes you feel like Josh is right next to you rapping, hearing all of his inflections shown through the way the text was put on paper.

One weakness is because of the quick pace of the words on the page, students might read too fast and miss some of the meaning and strength behind the words. However, if students continue to read, they will be able to pick up on what they miss.

Creative Activity

Students can create their own free verse or hip-hop like poetry in Kwame Alexander’s style to tell their life’s story, or maybe just part of what happened that day. They can even have a poetry slam with the poetry they create.

Related Resources

Readers who like The Crossover will like Kwame Alexander’s next book, Booked. It is also written in free verse just like The Crossover.

Alexander, Kwame. Booked. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Print.

Walter Dean Myers, also a winner of a Newbery Medal and Michael L. Printz Award, among others, has a well acclaimed book about basketball. For those readers that enjoyed The Crossover because of the basketball theme will surely enjoy this realistic fiction take into the same world.

Myers, Walter Dean. Slam! New York: Scholastic, 1996. Print.

Published Review
Gepson, Lolly. "The Crossover." Booklist 111.13 (2015): 70-71. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text. Web. 23 July 2016.