Tag: basketball

Standing Tall – New Graphic Novels about Girls and Sports

Lynn: Having grown up in a pre-Title IX world, I am continually awed at the number of sports opportunities for girls today. Yes, I know we still have a long way to go but compared with times before the 1970s, there is so much to celebrate. In this post, I am happy to review two recent graphic novels that feature girls and sports. An added bonus is that one of them is about the history of girls’ sports during the early days of Title IX.

HoopsHoops (Candlewick, 2023) by Matt Tavares is based on a true event. It chronicles the struggles of a start-up girls high school basketball team that overcame so much to claim the 1976 girls basketball championship in Indiana.

Judi’s friends all want to be cheerleaders and assume Judi wants that just as much. But Judi has another dream and that is playing on a basketball team. When the Lady Bears are formed, Judi joyfully signs up but the struggle is just beginning. The team has to practice in an elementary school gym, make their own uniforms and find their own transportation to the games. The athletic director tells them that when they fill a gym, they can share the high school gym with the boys. Tavares tells an engaging and compelling story absolutely rooted in fact, revealing the struggles, inequality, sexism and discrimination they faced. His wonderfully drawn characters come fully to life and I loved the many period details such as Judi’s iconic 70’s haircut, the uniform shorts and the RV they used to travel to games. The games are exciting and suspenseful and readers will be rooting for Judi and her team all the way.

An Author’s Note provides important history of Title IX, girls basketball and the background history of Title IX, and the Warsaw, Indiana girls’ basketball team.

Fox Point's own Gemma HopperFox Point’s Own Gemma Hopper (Random House Graphic, 2023) by Brie Spangler is set in the present and tells a story about the impact of sports participation on a shy and self-conscious teen.

Gemma Hopper is having a horrible year. Her mother has gone, leaving her father to work two jobs and Gemma to do the cooking, cleaning, laundry and care for her younger twin brothers on top of school. Her handsome older brother is a baseball superstar, about to leave for a traveling All-Star team and talented pitcher Gemma feels always in his shadow. 6ft tall and built like a bean pole, Gemma also feels increasingly out of step at school and with her best friend who longs to be part of the popular crowd. When a family tree assignment pushes Gemma to the brink, things really begin to spiral and her anger and sadness cause her to lash out at the people around her.

Brie Spangler’s story and clear graphic art are compelling and deeply sympathetic. She reveals so much about the characters through her illustrations. A particular highlight for me was the change in Gemma’s posture as she slumped through the school hallways, hiding her height and then standing tall and proud as she joins the team and finds her strength and confidence. The sports element is wonderfully conveyed as well as the drama of the games. But, it is Gemma herself, her insecurities, resentment and unhappiness that is the focus and as she confronts those emotions and begins to value herself, all readers will be cheering.

Dragon Hoops: Gene Luen Yang and Basketball

Cindy:  March Madness may be canceled, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have basketball in your life! Regular readers know they can count on a basketball book from Bookends each March. Have we got a champion for you this year! Dragon Hoops (First Second, 2020) by Gene Luen Yang puts a new finger roll, er…spin, on graphic novel memoirs. Yang needs a story idea and wonders if a comic nerd can get his head in the game by following his high school basketball team’s run for the state championship. Yang teaches math and computer science at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, CA. He steps out of his comfort zone and talks to Coach Lou Richie about his idea, even though he’s unsure that it’s a good one. In superhero stories, you know who the good guys and bad guys are and who will win in the end. That’s not the case in sports.

Dragon Hoops is an interesting blend of an O’Dowd basketball season, player backstories (including their ethnic, racial, or religious identities and the challenges they’ve overcome related to those), basketball history, and Yang’s pull between teaching, comics, and his family life. The recurring theme of taking a “step”—across a threshold, onto a court, or into a life-changing decision—is beautifully played. Once again, Yang takes not just a step, but a giant leap in his graphic novel mastery…I can’t wait to see the finished book with its shiny gold foil cover accents. (It published yesterday so we no longer have to wait!)

Lynn: I’ve loved all of Gene Yang’s previous books but this one takes the game into overtime! It is highly entertaining and completely engaging while at the same time doing so much. Yes, it is about a championship basketball season but it is also about family, commitment, the craft of writing, courage, fidelity to the truth in story, friendship, work ethic, love and more. It is important to remember that while Yang is a superb storyteller, he is also a superb artist. He is masterful at conveying emotions through his deceptively simple drawings and in this book he also manages to create the intense action of a championship basketball season. Dragon Hoops leaves a reader feeling both satisfied and deeply thoughtful. This book is a winner!

Cindy and Lynn: Follow Gene Luen Yang on Facebook or Instagram to see some of the great promos accompanying this social-distanced book launch. He’s working hard to make up for the canceled book tour.

Games of Deception – Basketball and History on the Brink of War

Lynn: Did you know the championship game of the first Olympic Basketball game was played on a converted tennis court and so much rain fell, the court looked like a “kiddie swimming pool?” Or that the inventor of the game, James Naismith, came to the Olympics but was refused admission to the first game? Or that while the male athletes had luxurious quarters with fantastic plentiful food, the female athletes were housed in a dormitory and fed on a sparse diet of boiled cabbage and sausage?

Andrew Maraniss packs Games of Deception: The True Story of the First U.S. Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany (Penguin/Philomel 2019) with fascinating sports tidbits like this and provides a breathless sense of being an eye-witness at these pivotal games. While the sports information is terrific, Maraniss is doing a lot more than historical play-by-play. The modern Olympics have always given us a window on the social and political events of their time but the 1936 games especially so. A crippling economic depression still gripped the world, Germany was preparing for war, the forces of racial, religious and gender prejudices and systemic discrimination afflicted people everywhere and the growing fanaticism of nationalistic hatred was intensifying. The Germans deliberately used the games to create a benign image of Nazism and while many were fooled, the truth was seen by a worried minority.

Maraniss does an excellent job of providing the complicated background of this intense and fraught period of history for young people, including information on the political, social, and economic situation as well as the origins of the game of basketball, the state of the game, and its inclusion in the Olympic games as a medal sport. And in a subject that will stand out to teen readers, he paints a horrifying picture of a state deliberately manipulating the truth to deceive the entire world.

With a broad array of primary sources, Maraniss includes the recollections of the team members, coaches, other athletes, and sportswriters of the day and their stories add a lively personal touch to the book. Often humorous, sometimes rueful, these accounts do a wonderful job of giving readers a sense of the attitudes and experiences of the moment. And in important concluding chapters, Maraniss also includes the stories of what happened to the athletes when they returned home. I especially enjoyed the Afterword chapter where the author writes about the origins of the book and his extensive research. Back matter includes excellent documentation and statistics.

This fascinating book will interest a wide range of readers, celebrating the first Olympic basketball competition, and placing it vividly in a critical moment of history.

Nikki on the Line: A Basketball Novel That Measures Up

Cindy: March Madness is upon us and that always means a basketball book recommendation from Bookends! This year, we are excited to have one with a female player, a rare find, especially one with basketball play as descriptive and exciting as that in Nikki on the Line (Little, Brown, 2019) by Barbara Carroll Roberts. Many players, female and male, will relate to Nikki’s dawning realization that her status as a premier player is on the line as she moves up to an elite club team in 8th grade where she is just one of many talented players. Nikki is forced to find where she fits now, both on the team, and with her friends, along with handling the expense of the team and additional struggles at home and at school with a troublesome genetics-related science project. Roberts not only understands basketball but also middle school girls.

I sat a mean bench on my school basketball team in the 70s
and read lots of basketball fiction featuring boys,
but this is the book I wish had been on my school library shelves.

The scenes at the tryouts, the grueling practices, and the exciting games are full of basketball written by someone who knows the drill. I sat a mean bench on my school basketball team in the 70s, and read lots of basketball fiction featuring boys, but this is the book I wish had been on my school library shelves.

P.S. Go Indiana Hoosiers!!!!

Lynn:  One of my pet peeves is a sports book with little sports action, something that happens way too often in sports books featuring girls. So this terrific book has made me very happy! As Cindy says, not only are the game scenes great, but Roberts captures the tryouts, practices, drills, and aching muscles too.  Present, too, are the related experiences of the too-intense parents, fierce competition, and the significant expenses of these elite travel teams.

While the sports action was a highlight for me, there are a lot of other elements to admire. The characters are richly developed, especially Nikki, who is struggling to balance school, family responsibilities, and her practice schedule as well as new pressures on friendships and family finances. Nikki’s family is a charming feature and I loved her research librarian mother who is baffled by her daughter’s love of sports and her super high-energy little brother and his pogo stick. 

A sweet first crush, the minefield of middle school, and the challenges of evolving friendship provide additional elements that keep the pages turning for readers not basketball-obsessed. This is a dynamite debut and I can’t wait to see what this author does next!

P.S. Go Purdue Boilermakers!!!!!!