Josh Bell
is my name.
But Filthy McNasty is my claim to fame.
Folks call me that
’cause my game’s acclaimed,
so downright dirty, it’ll put you to shame …
— from “The Crossover” by Kwame Alexander
Talk for more than a few minutes with Kwame Alexander and chances are excellent that he’ll break into his own verse, rattling it off fast and loud, cool and proud.
The snippet above this story kicks off Alexander’s “The Crossover,” which won the 2015 John Newbery Medal, the top honor in this country for youth literature.
In recent years, Alexander has become a slam-dunk champ among scores of teachers, librarians, parents and kids in junior high and high school — most especially boys 10 and older who say they didn’t read books for fun until they discovered Alexander’s sports novels written in hip, energetic verse.
Now the outgoing Virginia author is spending Poetry Month traveling the nation in a big and snazzy, custom-designed tour bus (“We got four bunk beds! A shower! And a kitchen!”) wrapped in blowups of the cover of his new title, “Rebound,” a companion/prequel to “The Crossover.”
Much like “The Crossover,” “Rebound” is a super-fast-paced slice-of-life story about family, love and friendship. Alexander is rolling to 30 cities on his “Rebound” bus trek, which stops in Atlanta on Monday. He’ll greet fans that night at the Atlanta-Fulton County Library’s Auburn Avenue branch. (Event details below.)
“I’ve come to love speaking and reading and interacting with my readers as much as I love writing the books,” says Alexander, who has published 25 titles so far, including other recent hits like “Booked” (2016), from the perspective of a soccer star whose world is shattered; and “Playbook: 52 Rules to Aim, Shoot, and Score in This Game Called Life” (2017), which is surprisingly fun and practical rather than preachy.
“The Crossover” zeros in on narrator Josh’s relationship with twin Jordan, and how these junior high African-American brothers handle things both on and off the basketball court “just when they’re crossing over from boyhood to manhood,” the author reports.
In “The Crossover,” fans got a good taste of the boys’ dad and coach, former professional basketball player Chuck “Da Man” Bell. In “Rebound,” Alexander zips readers back 30 years to serve up a milestone episode in Chuck’s own boyhood. Actually, he’s Charlie Bell at the start of “Rebound.” We learn how he became Chuck during his important summer of 1988, back “when Now and Laters cost a nickel.”
Alexander’s new companion novel contains heartbreak, along with dashes of hilarity. “Rebound” became the author’s “chance to write some about my childhood, and the exciting, interesting, adventurous time I had in middle school in the ’80s.”
The author recently started “Bookish,” a literary “digital TV show” that has already had a million views via Facebook. He also has acquired his own children’s imprint, Versify, through his publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
To launch in spring 2019, Versify is to release up to seven select titles each year. “I want to concentrate on very good books that deal in the issues and things that kids are facing, seeing on the news,” Alexander says. “I want to be real with them and do it in the way that they’ll be excited about it. I want to help give them literature as intelligent entertainment.”
His instincts have been strong thus far. Consider the fact that 22 publishers passed up the chance to publish “The Crossover.”
Alexander is on a mission: “To get everybody reading. Everybody up to age 99.” He “almost” sees himself as a hip-hop Mister Rogers for the here and now. Verse, he says, is the “surefire way” to light kids’ fire for lit.
“Poetry is a good way to be able to share things that are significant and sometimes larger than life and tough to deal with. It’s a way to talk about what’s happening in our country, in our homes — the tragic, the trying, the tribulations.”
Through poetry, “you can be concise in an original way. The white space on the pages makes it less overwhelming. The white space is part of the spiritual journey. But with the right words in the right order, I think you can change the world. I know this because I changed my world through poetry. I get it. I know this, I am this.”
Poetry was designed “to make us feel something, so let’s use it and let’s start feeling.”
The reporter tells Alexander that she wept throughout the final 30 pages of the 414-page “Rebound.”
“You and me both, my friend, you and me both,” he replies.
The author was finishing up “Rebound” while his mother was in the hospital, during her last days. “She all but told me she was ready to go,” he says. “I had to be the guy to give her permission. So I’m accessing some pretty powerful emotions and sharing them through Charlie. I’d say the writing was proving to be pretty powerful, pretty cathartic.
“Ultimately, I came to realize that the writing of this book was preparing me to be able to rebound.”
BOOK SIGNING
“Rebound” by Kwame Alexander, with several double-spread cartoon illustrations by Dawud Anyabwile (ages 10 and older, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99).
Alexander will talk about his new book, answer questions and sign books.
6:30 p.m. April 16. Free. Books sold on the premises by A Cappella Books. Auburn Avenue Research Library, 101 Auburn Ave. NE, Atlanta. 404-613-4001, afpls.org/news/2348-book-signing-with-rebound-author-kwame-alexander.
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