Book Review :: The Crossover – The Graphic Novel, by Kwame Alexander and Dawud Anyabwile

The Crossover: The Graphic Novel by Kwame Alexander, Dawud Anyabwile
ISBN: 1783449594
Published by Andersen
on 2020-03-05
Pages: 224
Source: Walker Books AUS
Find at Walker Books AUS
Goodreads

'With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . . The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. 'Cuz tonight I'm delivering,' raps twelve-year-old Josh Bell. Thanks to their dad, he and his twin brother, Jordan, are kings on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood – he's got mad beats, too, which help him find his rhythm when it's all on the line.

See the Bell family in a whole new light through Dawud Anyabwile's dynamic illustrations as the brothers' winning season unfolds, and the world as they know it begins to change.

Last updated on 19 March 2023

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My thoughts on The Crossover

I didn’t know much about this story before picking up the graphic novel, but The Crossover was such a fun, yet hard-hitting read. Written in verse, it follows Josh and Jordan Bell and their basketball endeavours at school. Their father was a semi-pro basketball player in his day and has always encouraged and supported the twins in their basketball pursuits.

But when Jordan’s interest start straying from basketball and towards girls, Josh feels alone and somewhere abandoned. When their father has a health scare, everything the boys know starts to change.

I don’t realise that it was written in verse until a few chapters in. It really needs to be read aloud, I think, to be truly appreciated, and I wonder how different or similar the novel version of this story is. But when I realised that it had that spoken-word aspect to the writing, it was suddenly a lot more clever, much more formed and thought out.

The illustrations in The Crossover are brilliant and I love the style of them. They’re black and white and orange, and it’s such a great way to portray the characters in this basketball-heavy graphic novel.

Overall, The Crossover was a good story and the illustrations really added to the whole feel of the book. Would I read it again? Probably not, no, but I did really enjoy it.

Have you read The Crossover? Novel or graphic novel? What did you think?