Tall Tales

This brightly illustrated, oversized picture book provides young readers with a fun collection of extraordinary basketball tales that make heroes of the underdogs as they find their own ways to do incredible feats.

Grade 3-8-Color photographs taken with infrared film illustrate the short stories in this unusual and oversized volume. The "tall tales" are all about basketball, and although the exaggerated happenings slightly stretch reality, they also challenge assumptions about people, based on size, gender, and capabilities. The large pictures, in "loud and wild colors," depict mostly inner-city scenes and capture the on-the-court action to a tee. In conjunction with text boxes in primary colors and a variety of fonts, they lend a vibrant, energetic look to the layouts. Photographs meld into the words; the words meld into the photographs; and the unusual color tones and angles create an engaging "you are there" look at the sport. Smith states that with this effort he hoped to express to readers "the love, pain, rhythm, and triumph" that he experiences when witnessing a great game, team, or player. Like his Rimshots (Dutton, 1999), this title will score big points with anyone who appreciates the magic of a ball and a hoop.
Barb Lawler, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this disappointing successor to his inventive debut, Rimshots, writer/photographer Smith imagines six outlandish stories of basketball feats. Unlike his previous volume, the flashy type and design here distract from the text and the photographs rather than augment them. In "Must Be the Shoes," for example, in which a girl gains the ability to shoot amazing hoops because of glowing white sneakers that magically appear in her closet, blocky chunks of text in various tinted hues divvy up the narrative, in which even the punctuation marks (dashes, quotation marks, etc.) appear in different colors. On the other hand, a story about a basketball whiz kid, "The Main Event," has the appearance of a newspaper article except for the eponymous player's name--which is printed in magenta every time it appears. Many of the photos look similar, and few demonstrate the interesting perspectives that the book's cover would seem to foreshadow. The tales themselves are disappointing: the punch lines of at least two imply that it's surprising when a girl can outplay her male teammates and opponents. Like Rimshots, the book's best moments magnify realistic on-court experiences, such as in "Walk Softly" when an extraordinarily gifted player who happens to be blind describes what he loves about the game ("The sound of the ball being caressed by the nylon cords is so beautiful that it speaks louder than I ever could"). Fans of Smith's earlier book will hope he returns to more moments such as these for his next volume. Ages 8-up. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Frenetic page design gives this collection of high and wild b-ball feats the quick energy of a fast-break playground game. After practicing at home on a too-high hoop, little Joanna Marie soars over the rim in her first pick-up game; Big John's jump shot is a game-stopper, too, despite the fact that he's blind; thanks to a pair of special shoes, Sabine makes her awed brothers look as if they're asleep on the court. The game takes a break as six players brag on their funky gear``I had some shoes that smelled so bad, when I tried to burn them the flames kept jumping out of the way!''before the action resumes. Smith scatters text of wildly mixed colors and sizes across arty, clipped and manipulated photos, shot on paved playgrounds with infrared film. A blare of saturated primary colors on every spread draws the eye at the expense of legibility; as with Rimshots (1999), he captures the game's speed and sweat, but tries too hard to snag the reader's attention. (Picture book. 7-9) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Like Smith's earlier nonfiction book Rimshots , this approaches street basketball from a funky, nonlinear approach. The excellent title says it all: the book is a collection of fantasy short stories about basketball. Stories feature players of both sexes. In one, a girl practices on a 16-foot-high basket and develops an outstanding jumping ability. In another, the best player in the neighborhood has his sunglasses knocked off and everyone realizes that he is blind. And in a third, there's a liars contest about smelly gym clothes. The stories are spare and secondary to the energetic layout of each page: the bold colors, varied font sizes, and jumbled photographs are as important to the telling of the stories as the rhythmic prose and street-smart dialogue, but with so much going on, some pages are rather disorienting. There's no denying, however, that this approach succeeds in capturing the fast, improvised feel of basketball in the playgrounds. Todd Morning