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He’s far more awesome than I realized.

When I went to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s website to get a little background info on him for this post, I discovered a man that has contributed more to our society than I believe most people are aware of. While I don’t have the space to recount all of his accomplishments here, I’ll bullet-point a fraction of them:

• NBA All-Time Leading Scorer
• US Cultural Ambassador, 2012
• California’s STEAM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Mathematics) Afterschool Ambassador, 2012
• Cancer Research Advocate
• Columnist for TIME Magazine and LA & OC Registers
• Award-winning Filmaker
• New York Times Best Selling Author of 9 Titles (including 3 children’s books)
• Two-time NAACP Image Award Winner (What Color Is My World & On the Shoulders of Giants)

It is his for work as a children’s book author that we celebrate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on this final day of 28 Days Later. The three, well-reviewed children’s titles he has co-authored with Raymond Obstfeld (thus far) are:

Streetball Crew Series, Book Two: Stealing the Game

“Abdul-Jabbar and Obstfeld…team up for another exploration of the intersection of sports and life conduct. Chris is a good, quiet kid who likes to keep his head down. As he says, ‘I was friendly to everyone but friends with no one.’ Still, if the machinery of thought made much noise, Chris would be a one-man band. For a 13-year-old, he does considerable shrewd, high-ground thinking, as do his friends (‘You know,’ one says, ‘not talking about things doesn’t actually make them disappear’). Where it really shows itself is on the basketball court, where he plays a savvy, court-wise game. Enter his brother, Jax, a golden boy who appears to have fallen from the pedestal upon which his well-intentioned parents have placed him, and Chris’ still waters are about to feel a hefty stone break their surface. Add his classmate Brooke, a sharp girl with plenty of her own baggage, and a waterspout is in the making. The authors’ light hand allows readers to inhabit the characters; to taste the value of respect, dignity and vulnerability; and to embrace the elemental joy of sports-all without ever feeling like they are being tube fed. The shifting structure of the story and a clever series of blind alleys keep readers on tenterhooks. A deft, understated sports thriller with a solid moral compass.” —Kirkus

“In another exemplary mix of issues and action both on and off the court, the middle-school cast of Sasquatch in the Paint (2013) returns to take on a team of older, bigger, thuggish rivals amidst a rash of local burglaries. Thirteen-year-old Chris is stunned when his golden-boy big brother, Jax, suddenly shows up at home with gambling debts after (he claims) dropping out of law school. With extreme reluctance, Chris agrees to help Jax get out from under-both by enlisting his street-ball buddies against a club team to settle a bet and by helping his brother break into a pawnshop. At the same time, Chris asks his Sherlockian friend Theo to check out Jax’s story, and he also definitely beats the odds by finding common ground with brilliant, acid-tongued classmate Brooke. Along with vividly drawn characters, the coauthors craft a mystery with artfully placed clues that Jax might not be the loser he seems to be, and also inject plenty of exciting, hard-fought basketball in which speed, strategy, and heart play equally strong roles. Flashbacks crank up the tale-s suspense, flashes of humor brighten it, and the end brings both surprise twists and just deserts all round.” —Booklist Online

Streetball Crew Series, Book One: Sasquatch in the Paint

“The author team behind What Color Is My World? opens the Streetball Crew series with the story of Theo Rollins who, though only an eighth grader, is already more than six feet tall. A self-proclaimed nerd, Theo gets recruited for the school basketball team, even though he’s terrible at the sport. Additionally, Theo is puzzled by new girl Rain, who’s smart but being threatened by a guy on a motorcycle; his widowed father is unexpectedly interested in dating; and he might be kicked off the school’s Aca-lympics team if he can’t balance his responsibilities. The depth and realism Abdul-Jabbar and Obstfeld bring to the novel keep it from being a run-of-the-mill sports story. Rain, for instance, is Muslim, while Theo is one of only a few black kids at his school; their ostracism doesn’t overshadow the action, but it isn’t ignored, either. Perhaps most refreshing is the fact that the authors allow Theo to gain confidence in basketball without the predictable game-winning shot. Readers will feel a kinship with Theo as he maneuvers through tough but realistic choices.” —Publishers Weekly

“A crisp tale of sports, smarts and what it means to be your own man or woman-or boy or girl, if you happen to be 13. It seems to be an embarrassment of riches to be, say, one of the best basketball players in history and also write tightly entertaining novels for kids, but there you have Abdul-Jabbar. Surely Obstfeld added polish and framing, but this obviously is a work of someone intimate with sports and, by extension, how sports can serve as metaphor for a way of being in the world. Here, newly tall eighth-grader Theo Rollins is trying to find his way between the brainiacs and the basketball players. Along the way, he meets Rain-aka Crazy Girl-a sort of ‘girl with the dragon tattoo’ minus the heaviest baggage. Characters, both friend and foe, feel real; there is talk of abandonment as well as serious comments about the skewed vision Americans have of Islam. The deepest running narrative pivots around sports, but the story has much to give. Theo’s cousin’s taxonomy of basketball players is broadly applicable: There are the happy-go-lucky, the self-conscious and ‘those who never want the game to be over, because each minute is like living on some planet where you got no problems….[They are], for that brief time, in a place where everything they thought or did mattered.’ Fearless, caring sports fiction.” —Kirkus

What Color Is My World?: The Lost History of African-American Inventors

“Making use of an unusual format, former NBA star Abdul-Jabbar and his On the Shoulders of Giants coauthor Obstfeld offer an upbeat history lesson set within a fictional narrative framework. Siblings the Shoulders of Giants coauthor Obstfeld offer an upbeat history lesson set within a fictional narrative framework. Siblings Ella and Herbie, whose story unfolds in typeset chapter booklike pages surrounded by warmly lit paintings of their adventures, are less than enthusiastic about their fixer-upper of a new house. But as eccentric handyman Mr. Mital unveils the house’s potential, he also teaches them about contributions made by African-American inventors (‘There’s more to our history than slavery, jazz, sports, and civil rights marches,’ he says). Flaps show lifelike portraits of individuals like Dr. Mark Dean, a v-p at IBM; Dr. Charles Drew, who developed the concept of blood banks; and nuclear engineer Lonnie Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker squirt gun. Ella’s off-the-cuff notes appear inside the flaps, while several spreads provide detailed profiles of other inventors and graphic novel–style passages. The banter between the siblings and, in particular, Ella’s snarky zingers keep things from feeling didactic—it’s an entertaining and often surprising exploration of lesser-known innovators, past and present.” —Publishers Weekly

“A fictional story lies at the heart of this unusually formatted collective biography. Twins Herbie and Ella and their parents have just moved into a run-down older home; while they work to fix it up, Mr. R. E. Mital, an eccentric handyman hired by their parents, recounts the contributions of African American scientists and inventors. As the figures are introduced, foldouts on the sides of the pages contain Ella’s notes (full of humor, as well as facts) about each one. More detailed profiles of other inventors fill the spreads, and some are introduced in graphic-novel-style pages. Instead of famous inventors such as George Washington Carver and Benjamin Banneker, readers are introduced to lesser-known individuals, including Alfred L. Cralle (inventor of the ice-cream scoop), Dr. Henry T. Sampson (gamma electric cell), and nuclear engineer Lonnie Johnson (Super Soaker). Information about the subjects’ home, lives, and avocations is a welcome addition…the large trim size, numerous illustrations, and unusual format (not to mention the celebrity author) will certainly attract browsers. And a surprise discovery about Mr. Mital’s identity at the end will leave readers with something to ponder.” —School Library Journal

For more information on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his work, please visit his website.

Where the Line Bleeds.

Salvage the Bones.

Men We Reaped: A Memoir.

If you have not been previously acquainted with the work of author Jesmyn Ward, consider today your lucky day.

Ward grew up in DeLisle, Mississippi, a small rural community with which she had a “love-hate relationship”. These hometown experiences have informed each of her three novels to date. While not technically published under the banner of children’s literature, Ward’s novels are particularly suited to the older YA audience due to the ages of the characters and the relevancy of their themes. Her pre-publication literary accomplishments are substantial: an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan (where she received five Hopwood Awards); a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University(2008-2010); a John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at The University of Mississippi (2010-2011). She currently serves as Associate Professor of English at Tulane University.

Shortly after receiving her MFA, Ward and her family were forced to flee their flooding home by Hurricane Katrina. Where the Line Bleeds (Agate Publishing, 2008), Ward’s first published novel, is the story of twin brothers who grow increasingly estranged after one of them begins to sell drugs to assuage the family’s post-Katrina financial burdens. It endured three years of rejection before finding a home at Agate.

The devastation Ward encountered day to day—driving back and forth through ravaged neighborhoods on her way to work at the University of New Orleans—rendered her mentally and emotionally unable to write anything new during the three years it took her first novel to sell. Landing her first book deal, however, inspired Ward to pick up the proverbial pen again. Her renewed efforts produced Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury USA, 2011) which, although roundly ignored by the literary community upon publication, ended up winning the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction. Post-nomination, it was suddenly and profusely well-reviewed. Another rich tale centered around Katrina, Salvage the Bones chronicles twelve days in the lives of a pregnant teen, Esch, her three brothers and her father—the ten days leading up to the storm, the day it hits, and the day after. According to the book’s copy, it is “[a] big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty…muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.”

Men We Reaped: A Memoir (Bloomsbury USA, 2013) is Ward’s most recent book. It is a reflection on her personal experience with the death of five young men in her life (including her brother), the causes ranging from suicide to drugs to accidents to the plain old “bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men.” In a starred review, Kirkus called it “[a]n assured yet scarifying memoir by young, supremely gifted novelist Ward… A modern rejoinder to Black Like Me, Beloved and other stories of struggle and redemption—beautifully written, if sometimes too sad to bear.”

In her acceptance speech for the National Book Award, Ward said this about the motivation behind her writing: “I understood that I wanted to write about the experiences of the poor, and the black and the rural people of the South…so that the culture that marginalized us for so long would see that our stories were as universal, our lives as fraught and lovely and important, as theirs.” This sensibility makes her novels significant mirror and window books for mature teens of all ethnicities and backgrounds.

If you had not been previously acquainted with the work of author Jesmyn Ward, I trust that you will consider today your lucky day. I certainly do.

THE BUZZ

For the buzz on Men We Reaped: A Memoir, click here.

For the buzz on Salvage the Bones, click here.

For the buzz on Where the Line Bleeds, click here.

For more extensive information on Jesmyn Ward and her books, please visit these article sources:

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/breakfast-meeting-nov-17/

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/18/author-wins-prestigious-award-for-book-ignored-by-literary-world/

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/celebratory-night-for-the-book-world/?_r=0#more-244085

http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/jesmyn-ward

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesmyn_Ward

Author Photo Credit: Adam Johnson

By Tina Vasquez, for The Children’s Book Review
Published: September 30, 2010

Around Our Way on Neighbors’ Day

by Tameka Fryer Brown (Author), Charlotte Riley-Webb (Illustrator)

Reading level: Ages 4-8

Hardcover: 32 pages

Publisher: Abrams Books for Young Readers (August 1, 2010)

In Around Our Way on Neighbor’s Day a young narrator guides us through her wonderfully diverse neighborhood that is swirling with activity in preparation for Neighbor’s Day, a community gathering as much about friends as it is about food.

On her way home from a long day of playing double dutch with her friends, our young guide leads the way from barber shop to chess game, basketball game to her mother’s kitchen and she encounters friends and neighborhood characters all along the way.

This is a fun, rhythmic read that showcases a multi-ethnic community joining together to share some laughs and more than a few servings of rice and beans, collard greens, mac and cheese, and grilled lime chicken- all contributed by various families in the area. Throw some dancing into the mix and you’ve got one heck of a party.

Add this book to your collection: Around Our Way on Neighbors’ Day

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By: Amy Bowllan, on 7/26/2010
Blog: Bowllan's Blog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  Writers Against Racism, AROUND OUR WAY ON NEIGHBORS' DAY, IN A MOOD, Tameka Fryer Brown, Add a tag

Tameka Fryer Brown is a picture book author whose first title, AROUND OUR WAY ON NEIGHBORS’ DAY, will be in stores August 1, 2010. Her second book, IN A MOOD, is scheduled to publish in 2012. Visit Tameka online.

  

 

Briefly describe the impact racism had on you as a young person:

 

There are a few times I can consciously remember feeling the impact of racism as a child: Having an elementary school friend confide in me that her father always trained their dogs to attack black people; being repeatedly called ni**er one afternoon by a little boy much younger than my 9-year-old self; having a very popular girl use the same vulgar slur (right in front of me!) at a “cool kids” HS study group session, for which I’d originally been so excited to receive an invitation.  

 

Mostly, though, racism was just an “understood” thing: the darker you were, the lower you were on society’s acceptability totem pole. Since I was a dark brown black child, I instinctively knew where I ranked in the eyes of the world. However, thanks to strong familial influences, I also knew that my destiny would not and could not be controlled by anybody else’s preconceived notions about my inherent value or capabilities. From a young age, I was groomed for success via a strong emphasis on academic achievement and personal integrity. “Pretty is as pretty does” was a standard phrase I heard in my youth, as was “I AM Somebody” and “Be the labor great or small, do it WELL…or not at all!”

 

Has your personal experience of racism impacted your professional work as a writer?

 

Since who we are is a sum total of our life’s experiences, how could it not? I do think the impact is more subconscious than conscious, in that my writing (to date) has not been inspired by any specific external or political motivation, but rather by my hope that the younger generations will grow into world citizens, who’ll not merely view cultural diversity as an acceptable concept, but a desirable one. Although, I suppose “normalizing diversity” would be considered a political motivation by some….

 

In what way can literature be used to combat the effects of racism and promote tolerance?

 

To a large extent, I think it already does–at least for those readers who avail themselves of the various voices and perspectives out there, who don’t confine themselves to the “same-old, same-old”.

 

Writers can help by producing polished stories for the market in ALL categories–including stories starring POC characters that, while culturally authentic, are not ABOUT race.

Publishers can help to expand the literary experience of readers by acquiring –and strongly promoting–more titles authored by people of color…not just to niche markets, but broadly, to the so-called “main-stream” audiences.

Readers need to make the conscious effort to purchase and read books in their favorite genres, which feature ma

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