There is a traffic stop on the way to a game, in which the boys’ father (like many an African-American man) is pulled over for a minor infraction Josh is warned by his mother about what happens to young black men who let their tempers get the better of them his parents fight not over money or fidelity but over diet and hereditary hypertension. “The Crossover” doesn’t ignore contemporary issues involving race. That this is a portrait of a successful, close-knit African-American family in the Obama era also seems to be a part of that understatement. The fact that the twins are both college-bound is an understated given. Their father is a former European league basketball player, and their mother is an assistant principal at the boys’ junior high school. Josh and JB’s world is one in which both parents are professionals. Besides being an inch taller and the one with dreadlocks to his neck, Josh is also the brother with the larger vocabulary - by the novel’s end, he will define 12 important words and terms.

The story is written in verse, but have no fear: Here, poetry is in service to the interior and exterior worlds of Josh, who plays forward to JB’s shooting guard. When we first encounter them in Kwame Alexander’s beautifully measured novel of life and lines, “The Crossover,” they are deep into a year when everything changes. Josh and JB are twins, double trouble on the basketball court, almost 13 years old.

Swing by kwame alexander sparknotes