Two teens on a city basketball court start a game of matching each other’s shots. Miss five tries and you are out!
The first to spell out H.O.R.S.E. loses, so these two literally shoot for the stars. Easy shots are baby stuff for them. Their conversation goes back and forth as the hoopsters, a guy and a gal, leave the physical confines of the court and let their imaginations take flight. He takes a mighty jump for his “Magellan shot,” leaving New York and going “clear around the world.” She aims an “outer-space resistant” ball with a “kind of bounce shot” that hits Saturn, mystifies astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, returns to Earth and slips cleanly through the hoop. “Not bad at all,” responds the guy. Myers has great fun with his gravity-defying trash talk and spirited game of one-upmanship. His ballplayers are beautiful, elongated figures painted in brightly textured yellow, blue and brown pastels. Photographic collages of New York City buildings adorn the pages. In his author’s note, Myers states that the shots are all fact-based. Who’s to argue?
An exciting bragging-rights adventure on the basketball court, around and beyond planet Earth and back again. (author’s note) (Picture book. 6-10)
