I try to read a good variety of book, both for my own good and also so I can provide reader advisory to kids at school, but I've never been good at reading the sports books. I've never read anything by Mike Lupica or Tim Green. I did manage to read Kwame Alexander's The Crossover, a novel in verse about basketball though. I decided since I liked it, I could also get through Booked.
Booked is another novel in verse, but this centers on soccer. I've never cared for soccer, but I like novels in verse, and Alexander create wonderful rhythms with his words. Speaking of words, Nick Hall, the soccer star protagonist, has one of the most extensive vocabularies I've seen in a children's/YA novel. This is due to his father, a linguistics professor, who makes him read the dictionary. Here's a list of all the words and terms I learned from reading this book:
verbomania: a crazed obsession with words
malapropism: the amusing and ludicrous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of similar sound
futsal: indoor soccer played with five players on each side
cachinnate: to laugh loudly
mewling: weak crying, whimpering
ragabash: worthless, rubbish
codswallop: something utterly senseless, nonsense
logorrhea: excessive use of words
limerence: the state of being infatuated with another person
flummoxed: bewildered or confused
onomatophobia: fear of hearing a certain word
farrow: a litter of pigs
sweven: dream or vision while sleeping
nutmeg: a soccer trick in which the ball is dribbled between the player's legs
rapprochement: reestablishment of harmonious relations
twain: two
callipygous: having beautiful buttocks
incompossible: incapable of coexisting
hellkite: an extremely cruel person
gadfly: an annoying person
wordbound: unable to find expression in words
yobbery: hooliganism
zazzy: stylish or flashy
His best friend Coby is even more obsessed with soccer. Coby happens to be half Singaporean and half Ghanaian, so score a point for diversity! #weneeddiversebooks
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