reading review - slam!

At the height of the statewide COVID shutdown, I basically stopped reading for a few weeks. When things started to come back toward The New Normal, I found myself out of the book habit. I turned to a tried and true book reopening strategy - I thought back to the past and checked out some old favorites from the library. Slam! is a book I remember very clearly from my childhood - it's a great bit of sports fiction, geared toward the teen reader, which I liked as a kid for its sports action, and gradually understood as I grew older to be much more than about basketball.

See book notes here.

Slam! Walter Dean Meyers (July 2020)

The book is about the title character, a seventeen year-old at a New York magnet school, whose struggles on the basketball court begin to mirror the challenges he faces in the rest of his life. I felt at the heart of this story was a conflict of expectations, something Meyers mentioned in an interview included with my copy; what I saw in Slam! was how young people who feel trapped in a certain lifestyle can clash with the instruction, example, and information provided by the adults charged with helping them form better expectations. One of the most interesting examples to this point was a teacher's thought that math skills were applicable in places such as grocery stores - Slam muses that if a store made him do fractions, he would find a different store. It's not so important that one or the other is correct in this example - it's much more significant that when a teacher and a student cannot relate to each other, the breakdown is far more costly to the student.

The plot lines of grades and basketball are among the main arcs in the book, but it's Slam's art project that brings a perspective which elevates the story. It seems that the camera he uses to document his neighborhood and its people gives him his first view of his life through the eyes of an outsider; he's briefly separated from his subjects, many of whom have fallen in life, whose similarities to him suggest he may be the next one to trip. The process of making art out of his life is also a crucial symbolic step toward giving his current challenges a broader perspective, which enables him to make better decisions. As the subplot of his documentary progresses, there are increasing examples of Slam reevaluating his choices, particularly in the contexts of relationships, authority figures, and peers. In the aftermath of a critical incident in which a teacher crosses a line and verbally abuses him, Slam starts to see that there can be a point, message, or lesson even when nothing can be done about the situation in the moment; toughness means battling right to the end, even if it's just to remain accountable to yourself.

TOA Rating: Three free throws out of four.