Swish!

Juvenile nonfiction 

"It all started with those boys 

thump-thumping basketballs 

up and down Chicago's South Side 

in alleys, driveways, and parking lots."

     When I was a teenager the Harlem Globetrotters were larger than life.  It took a lot of grit for them to become a presence in major league basketball.  Suzanne Slade tells their amazing story in Swish! The Slam-dunking, Alley-ooping, High Flying Harlem Globetrotters.  

     In the 1920s top basketball teams only accepted white players.  Exceptional Black players were relegated to traveling teams.  One, the Globetrotters, traveled in a model T Ford.  They played every day in all kinds of spaces that were not arenas.  Because of Jim Crow they were excluded from most restaurants and hotels.  Even facilities as basic as water fountains and bathrooms were whites only.  Whites showed a lot of hostility when those talented players whipped their teams.

     I don't know about you, but I probably wouldn't have persisted under those conditions.  Amazingly they did.

     And the rest is history.  Swish!, told in verse, is a wonderful read aloud.  It has the cadence of a lively ball game.  It's also a great way to win over sports loving kids who think poetry is dull as dirt and irrelevant.

On a purrrsonal note, in less than a half hour I'll have to wrangle Tobago into her cat carrier and walk her down Route 2 to the veterinarian for her check up.  It hasn't started raining yet, yet being the operational word.  The sky is looking nothing if not ominous.  The odds of me getting her there and back before the day long rain: not good.  I'll be very relieved when I get this errand accomplished. (Jules)

I don't see why we can't forget about this errand.  I'm perfectly healthy.  ( Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to all who persist through the challenges created and perpetuated through racism.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone