Customer Reviews

The Basket Counts

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Arnold Adoff's collection of poems makes connections for young, old (but never too old to take it to the hoop), female and male. My son and daughter (9 and 11) loved this book, and I am ordering it for my sister (a college coach). The illistrations are fabulous! These poems are inspirational and thoughtful.

Beautifully illustrated, this book makes you feel the pulse and rhythm of basketball. Connecting you to the sport in a way that nothing else can, except for actually playing, the poetry in this book puts the reader into the drive of the player and the textures of the court. For those who love the sport of basketball, this book is a quick and enjoyable read. The illustrations are divided equally between male and female players and also include a a boy driving to the hoop in a wheelchair, all of which are drawn to capture the energy and flow of the words in the book. The books type is laid out differently on each page to capture the individual thoughts of each poem. My favorite poem is aptly titled In your face and ends with, "I want you to memorize the back of my head". This is the dream and goal of all basketball players and the book captures many other similar hoop thoughts equally well. I would recommend this book particularly to female athletes ages 13-18 because of the strong emphasis on both female and male characters in the poems. I would also recommend this to boys ages 13-16 who enjoy the sport or who are reluctant readers.
The Basket Counts by Arnold Adoff
for more book reviews:
[...]

This book consists of free-verse poems that explore different aspects of basketball, from early-morning driveway practice, to shooting small objects into a hoop behind a bedroom door, to intense moments during a game.

The illustrations in this book were beautiful, and there were some nice moments in the poetry. However, the book as a whole didn't grab me. There was no continuity to the poems; instead of following one person or one team through a day or a season, the poems were random snippets of different basketball experiences, with different angles and different narrators. I also found the spacing of the poems very distracting. Many parts were organized into blocks, which looked good when the eye first skimmed the poem, but made them more difficult to read and process.