In this brilliant meditation on basketball and imagination, Caldecott Honor artist Christopher Myers (Harlem; Wings) depicts the game as a series of maneuvers, bluffs and boasts between two players who connect through competition.
A boy in a yellow T-shirt and gray headband approaches another, sporting a blue jersey and a Pan-African wristband. Myers unites them from the start with the blue background behind the yellow T-shirted new arrival, and the golden backdrop behind the blue-jerseyed host. The words of the "guest" appear in black type; the words of the host are in brown type. The new arrival asks the host (the boy in blue possesses the ball), if he'd like to play a game of horse. "Horse?" the host replies. "Yeah," says the boy in the yellow jersey, explaining the rules. One person shoots "any kind of shot" and the other player has to do the same shot or he gets a letter. The first to spell "horse" is out. The host gets the rules: "Right, we call it 'ghost' where I come from.... You start." The guest says, "Okay, layup with my eyes closed." Each new shot to be matched ups the ante and takes the competitors farther afield, to the rooftop of a skyscraper, and sailing over the Pacific. They take "out of bounds" to a completely new level.
This imaginative urban tall tale begins in the known sphere of the cement playground and spins out of this world, among the stars. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness