Booked by Kwame Alexander

I've been delving into this Verse Novel format more. It's a strange way to read a story and not at all like the epics I teach. When I first heard of it, I thought it would be clumsy and difficult for a young audience in the same ways that reading the epics are. I was wrong.

I was wrong because my assumptions were flawed. Epics are difficult for younger readers because of the use of poetic conceits and need for abstraction in approaching even basic plot points on top of overarching difficulty with approaching a fundamentally alien culture that happens with any translated literature. Verse novels are a new format for YA so the text is written with a contemporary YA audience in mind. I'm not sure how well they will wear as time marches on, but for now they are very accessible. The authors have mostly dispensed with poetic conceits by entirely writing in a straightforward blank verse. While descriptive and expressive language is still of primary importance, the use of metaphor and simile tends to be used more sparingly and with more in-text explanation. The result is actually more concrete than prose in some cases because the poetry format allows a more direct description of character emotion without feeling heavy handed. Couple that with the greater amount of whitespace on the page and it explains why this format is so successful with struggling readers.

Of course some examples of the format are better than others. After reading The Crossover,  I immediately picked up Alexander's other verse novel: Booked. It's an excellent book, but not as emotionally devastating as The Crossover.

Nick Hall is a middle school soccer star. His dad is a linguistics professor and his mother is an out of work horse trainer. All Nick wants to do is play soccer, but when his mom leaves the house to take a job, Nick's relationship with his dad gets strained. Add on top of that a couple of neighborhood bullies and Nick is having a rough year.

I liked how intelligent Nick was. His voice felt appropriate for a 13 year old boy, but his approach to issues was more than usually thoughtful and his expression more articulate (thanks to his father's word obsession). While he rebels a little at the academic expectations, he also revels in his use of words which is a lot of fun to read.

The bully angle is not the primary focus of the book, but the subplot is well handled and resolves well. Overall, it's a good read.