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fernthepanda's review against another edition
3.0
I am no sports-enthusiast so this book did not have the greatest appeal to me as a reader, but I love the appeal for kids who are its actual audience. This one is sure to find a home with many kiddos.
tashrow's review
4.0
A basketball court + a ball + two kids = the perfect sum to play horse! When two boys meet at the basketball court, they immediately invite one another to play horse or ghost. It’s the game where one person takes a shot and then the other person has to try to match the shot exactly. It starts out simply enough with a layup with your eyes closed, but watch where this game goes! Filled with a banter that challenges one another to seek an even wilder idea, the two boys quickly start to talk about shooting a basket from the roof of a neighboring building when standing on one toe. The Magellan shot takes it even further, with a jump across the ocean and around the world and a dunk with a tongue! That’s not the end of the game though, you will just have to read it to see the final play.
I love the playfulness of this book and the friendly tone of the banter between the two boys. The fact that not a single shot is actually thrown makes it very funny too. This is not a challenge about sports but about imagination and thinking outside the court. Myers writes with a feel for modern dialogue between teens that doesn’t resort to modern vernacular but instead has the perfect rhythm and posturing. Myers’ art is equally modern with lanky boys against bright colored backgrounds. He also mixes in photographs and builds collages that add texture and pattern.
Great fun to read, it will have you challenged to a game of horse as soon as you can find a court and a ball. My favorite shots were always with my eyes closed and backwards. How about you? Appropriate for ages 5-7.
I love the playfulness of this book and the friendly tone of the banter between the two boys. The fact that not a single shot is actually thrown makes it very funny too. This is not a challenge about sports but about imagination and thinking outside the court. Myers writes with a feel for modern dialogue between teens that doesn’t resort to modern vernacular but instead has the perfect rhythm and posturing. Myers’ art is equally modern with lanky boys against bright colored backgrounds. He also mixes in photographs and builds collages that add texture and pattern.
Great fun to read, it will have you challenged to a game of horse as soon as you can find a court and a ball. My favorite shots were always with my eyes closed and backwards. How about you? Appropriate for ages 5-7.
brucefarrar's review
5.0
One sunny day on a city basketball court, one young man challenges another to a game of H.O.R.S.E. as they debate who will take the first shot, the game turns from basketball shots to who can imagine the most fantastically spectacular one. From the court they soar to the top of tall buildings in a single bound, then through the stratosphere, around the globe, and then around the solar system to land with a tongue dunk.
Myers’s brightly colored paint and collage illustrations for his tale of imaginative bragging on the court that goes from urban to interplanetary in just 32 pages (including a cameo of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson) garnered him a Coretta Scott King illustrator honor in 2013. It has been boosted into a higher orbit by the recording of the books dialog with the author and producer Dion Graham voicing the two young rivals. The Live Oak Media disc that comes packaged with the book won the 2015 Odyssey Award for the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States.
Myers’s brightly colored paint and collage illustrations for his tale of imaginative bragging on the court that goes from urban to interplanetary in just 32 pages (including a cameo of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson) garnered him a Coretta Scott King illustrator honor in 2013. It has been boosted into a higher orbit by the recording of the books dialog with the author and producer Dion Graham voicing the two young rivals. The Live Oak Media disc that comes packaged with the book won the 2015 Odyssey Award for the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States.
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