Rimshots: Basketball Pix, Rolls, and Rhythms

by Charles R. Smith

Overview

The power, strength, and determination of the game of basketball are captured in striking photographs and sizzling stories, poems, and personal reflections. From frustration to humor, joy, and triumph, this streetwise look at a favorite American pastime conveys all the passion and excitement of the sport.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140566789
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	04/03/2000
Series:	Picture Puffin Books
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	10.06(w) x 10.06(h) x 0.15(d)
Lexile:	810L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Charles R. Smith has traveled the United States and abroad to take photos for the NBA, SLAM, and Sports Illustrated. He is also an award-winning children’s author and poet, with more than 30 books to his credit. He’s won a Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration for his photographic illustration of Langston Hughes’s poem My People and a Coretta Scott King Honor Author Award for his Muhammad Ali biography, Twelve Rounds to Glory. He lives in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Editorial Reviews

The endlessly energetic design is the most valuable player in this passionate, idiosyncratic collection of basketball photos, anecdotes, poems and reflections. Lots of colored type and artfully deployed fonts rev up commonplace observations or recollections ("I remember when I was the shortest on the team"; "I remember seeing my parents in the stands, even though I just played the bench"); key words pop out in bright type to give the text the syncopated rhythm of courtside conversations. Curving lines of poems virtually roll across some spreads, enticing even verse-o-phobes to read closely. Smith ranges from the obvious (games he has played, action on the court) to the wry (a page titled "Excuses") to the idiosyncratic (writers whose books he read as he worked on this book) to the poignant (e.g., "Meek"). A professional photographer, Smith is at his best with his informal, sepia-toned photos of basketball action on street courts, which focus largely on players' feet and legs rather than faces--a sophisticated treatment that goes well with the hip-hop look of the text. This unconventional book might well sneak up on kids who don't think they like to read and score a slam-dunk. Ages 8-up. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 5 Up--Through unusual fonts and splashes of color, the design of this book mirrors the exuberant nature of this American pastime. Like the game, the poems are quick, energetic, and highly rhythmic, and the prose pieces, personal and passionate. The author/photographer reveals his unabashed love of the game and insight into the personal dynamics of the sport in each double-page spread. The pieces are both varied and accessible. In the humorous narrative "No Sole," different voices lecture a player complaining about how much his new shoes hurt. Each narrator remembers how it was "when I was your age," from no high-tech shoes, to no new shoes, to no shoes at all. In `"Please Put Me In, Coach!!"' a boy's pleading voice promises "not to hog," and "I'll listen to you now" if only he can go back in the game. "School's in Session" and "The Sweetest Roll" are gracefully shaped poems that will inspire students to create their own selections. The concluding piece, "Everything I Need to Know in Life, I Learned from Basketball," will surely find its way onto locker-room and gymnasium walls. All of the superb dual-toned photographs depict young men. Once students and teachers become aware of this title, it will bounce right off the shelves.--Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI

School Library Journal

Mixing poetry, memoir, short fiction, and photography, Smith pays a fast-break tribute to the pleasures and pains of b-ball, from being benched (" `Please Put Me In, Coach!!' "); to playing "Hot Like Fire," on the way to scoring 65 points; remembering "the time when my dad could no longer play one on one; or how a new kid, "Meek," proved himself on the court, once he was given a chance. Figures in the photos are blurred, clipped, or shot from behind, giving the illustrations an arty look, and the author is fond to excess of text in multiple colors and typefaces, but for range of experience and immediacy of feeling, this blows past Robert Burleigh's Hoops (1997). Smith closes with another tribute, to the African-American athletes, musicians, and artists who have meant the most to him. (Poetry. 8-11) .

Kirkus Reviews