The New York Times Book Review - Christopher Myers
…Game Changer resurrects…John McLendon, the African-American basketball coach of the North Carolina College for Negroes team, who made the "secret game" against the Duke University Medical School team happen, and the players on both squads who challenged tradition and played together. DuBurke's illustrations are appropriately historical in feel. The basketball scenes are rendered in sequences as quickly paced as television montage. Muted tones and a vintage newsreel patina add a veneer of authenticity…This book adds new heroes to the pantheon…
Publishers Weekly
★ 08/17/2015
In an account brimming with suspense and emotional tension, Coy (Hoop Genius) and DuBurke (Best Shot in the West) show how a game of college-level basketball one Sunday morning in 1944 helped provide a glimpse of the future of the game and of a segregated nation. The man behind the game was John McLendon, coach of the North Carolina College of Negroes’ Eagles, who masterminded the clandestine meet-up between his team and the all-white squad from Duke University Medical School, at a time when segregation laws prohibited play between black and white teams. Initial uneasiness—the athletes, “some of whom had never been this close to a person of a different color, were hesitant to touch or bump into one another”—gave way to a game in which the Eagles trounced Duke using a hard-driving fast-break style; a follow-up match saw the teams blending their ranks. DuBurke’s shadowy images in pencil and paint have the feeling of long-buried photos snapped in secret, while Coy skillfully highlights both the energy and importance of the game and the dangerous social climate in which it was played. Ages 7–11. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
"This book offers a slice of history and an inspiring portrait in courage . . . [An] exciting account of a landmark game played ahead of its time."—starred, Booklist
Kirkus Reviews
2015-06-23
A picture-book account of a historic, secret basketball matchup in the Jim Crow South. Amid widespread segregation and rampant racism in 1944 Durham, North Carolina, black players and white players came together to play ball. The legendary African-American coach John McLendon, who learned the game from its founder, James Naismith, is depicted in this true story as a man with foresight and the courage to step beyond the bounds of the color line for friendly competition. An undercover, illegitimate contest he helped to arrange between the Duke University Medical School and the North Carolina College of Negroes demonstrated that blacks and whites could play together some 22 years before Texas Western would win the national championship with an all-black starting five. DuBurke's arresting illustrations play up the basketball action and the emerging camaraderie that conjured the possibility of defeating Jim Crow. In its focus on the so-called Secret Game, however, and its tailpiece that assures readers that "today, people don't think twice about players of different skin colors competing with one another," the story is a bit kumbayah. Yes, the NCAA and NBA are integrated, but the Donald Sterlings of the world show there is still work to be done. Though necessarily brief and lacking in nuance, the story is nevertheless a charming read for young basketball fans. (author's note, timeline, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 7-11)
