Hoop Crazy!

Deborah Dowson is a Canadian children’s librarian living in Powell,
Ohio.

Nick is ready for the challenge of competing in an NBA-sponsored
three-on-three basketball tournament, but now it looks like his biggest
challenge is to find a replacement player for the team. An unexpected
visit from Nick’s cousin seems to offer a solution, but one that Nick
is not at all happy about. Ned is bookish and clumsy and hardly ever
watches a basketball game, let alone plays it. However, he is incredibly
tall and a quick learner, and the team has no choice but to take on the
arduous task of training this complete neophyte. While Ned is learning
the game, Nick is learning patience, perseverance and tolerance, and
with a little luck and a lot of hard work the team overcomes tremendous
obstacles and has an amazing outcome at the tournament.

The usually wise and mature Nick reveals an intense bias against a boy
who seems to have nothing in common with himself. He ridicules his
cousin who prefers books and bugs to balls and hoops. Then Ned’s
dedication to learning the game starts to impress Nick and allows him to
see past their differences. Two of the best aspects of this book are
that the reader is instructed in some of the basics of the game as it is
explained to the new player and there is an abundance of basketball
action. Although the plot is a little too incredible to be entirely
satisfying, it should prove to be as popular as Walter’s other stories
about basketball, Three on Three (1999) and Full Court Press (2000).
Recommended.