Publisher Description
It’s one single steamy July day at the West 4th Street Court in NYC, otherwise known as the Cage. Hotshot baller ESPN is wooing the scouts, Boo is struggling to guard the weird new guy named Waco, a Spike Lee wannabe has video rolling, and virgin Irene is sizing up six-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch-tall Chester. Nine of YA literature’s top writers reveal how it all goes down in this searing novel in short stories that ingeniously pick up where the last one ends. Characters weave in and out of narratives, perspectives change, and emotions play out for a fluid and fast-paced ode to the game. Crackling with humor, grit, and streetball philosophy, and featuring poems by Charles R. Smith Jr., this anthology is a slam dunk.
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"One day, one court, ten testaments to the drama inside the game and out. This is the home of pick-up basketball, downtown Manhatten, where the immortals played when black players weren't allowed in big-time college basketball and the NBA. And still they come, troubled, homeless, too young, too old, nothing matters but your game when you step into The Cage."
—
Michael (4 out of 5 stars)
About the Authors
Marc
Aronson is an editor and author of many award-winning books
for young people, including Master of
Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies and Pick-Up Game, which he coedited with
Charles R. Smith Jr.
Charles R. Smith Jr. is an award-winning author, photographer, and poet with more than thirty books to his credit. His awards include a Coretta Scott King Award for his photographs accompanying the Langston Hughes poem “My People” and a Coretta Scott King Honor for his biography on Muhammad Ali, Twelve Rounds to Glory. He is the author of Rimshots, Hoop Kings, Hoop Queens, Tall Tales, Short Takes, Diamond Life, and I Am America.
Kirsten Potter has won several awards, including more than a dozen AudioFile Earphones Awards and been a three-time finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. Her work has been recognized by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and by AudioFile magazine, among many others. She graduated with highest honors from Boston University and has performed on stage and in film and television, including roles on Medium, Bones, and Judging Amy.
About Dion Graham
Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting.