The book might have been better if we heard his voice, too. Our narrator, Josh Bell, is a Kid Hero, twelve years old, with an identical twin brother, Jordan “JB” Bell, who could technically qualify for Herodom, but we don’t ever get his narration. So what does the story entail? Let’s do a breakdown of how The Crossover fits with The Newbery Formula: The characters around Josh tend to feel flat and static, mostly serving the purpose that the story needs of them, and not a lot more. The fragments, and Josh’s first-person perspective on the material, means that we get a very limited scope of the story’s action – and especially of the other characters. But fragments, let alone poetry fragments, are a bold choice to hang an original story on – the writer has to trust his audience to connect the dots, and trust his story and style to support each other. The 1998 Newbery winner, Out of the Dust, is told in a similar style to The Crossover. I’m no stranger to drabbles, or to fragments.
#Crossover book themes series#
The text itself is practically a series of drabbles, sketching scenes with an economy that would make Ernest Hemingway burst with pride. Instead of typical prose, sentences are sliced into ribbon-thin paragraphs of verse. You have been warned.īefore I get into the story, let me talk about the style for a bit. It is the winner of the John Newbery Medal for the 2015. The Crossover is the story of basketball phenom Josh Bell, his twin brother, and their father’s complicated legacy.
Do you like sports? Hot damn, you’re in luck! The Crossover stars two passionate basketball players, and even off the court, the b-ball references are as plentiful and obvious as colorful drops of sweat in a Gatorade commercial.
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Do you hate when books tell you how to feel? The Crossover withholds judgment across the board. Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover is prime reading material for those children who don’t like reading.ĭo long, square paragraphs bore you? The Crossover is told in poetry, varying between sizzling hip-hop and irregular verse, all unnecessary fuss shaved away. This month, we examine 2015 Newbery Medal winner, The Crossover by Kwame Alexander. Decoding the Newbery is a monthly column in which Newbery Medal winners are examined and deconstructed by regular contributor and author Catherine Faris King.
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