A regular speaker at colleges and conferences in the U.S., he also travels the world planting seeds of literary love (Singapore, Brazil, Italy, France, Shanghai, etc.). Kwame believes that poetry can change the world, and he uses it to inspire and empower young people through his PAGE TO STAGE Writing and Publishing Program released by Scholastic. His other works include Surf's Up, a picture book Booked, a middle grade novel and He Said She Said, a YA novel. Rebound is perfect for anyone you know who thinks they don’t like reading (particularly any 12-year-old boys), and also everyone who does.Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, and New York Times Bestselling author of 21 books, including The Crossover, which received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the Most Distinguished Contribution to American literature for Children, the Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor, The NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, and the Passaic Poetry Prize. When you finish it, you just want to read it again. The poetry grabs you and won’t let you go the raw emotion and powerful storytelling pours out of the pages. This is the prequel to Kwame Alexander’s masterful and Newbery prize-winning basketball verse novel The Crossover (and it’s fine to read the two in either order).Īlso written in verse, Rebound is funny, moving and full of great ideas on how to live your life – and almost impossible not to read in one sitting.

Here, his cousin Roxie introduces him to basketball, his grandad introduces him to hard work and jazz, and things begin to change. It seems like nothing can make him feel any joy in life now and that nothing ever will – not even his lovely best friends CJ (Crystal) and Skinny.Īfter he gets into a spot of trouble, his mum decides to send him to spend the summer with his paternal grandparents a few hours drive away. It’s 1988 and Charlie Bell (later to become Chuck ‘Da Man’ Bell) is 12 years old and going through the hardest time in his life after his dad dies from a stroke.

The rebound kwame alexander