Talk about a slam dunk! Gene Luen Yang's latest follows a high school basketball team on their journey to the state finals. A high school teacher, Yang met with his school's basketball coach after hearing about the team's chances to finally win the championship game after years of making it all the way only to come up short.

I don't follow basketball, but Yang begins the book as a newbie to the sport as well. Throughout he takes readers through the history of the game (from its conception to rule changes to international leagues and more), while also providing insight into the lives of the players he's following. As he grows closer to the players and begins to understand the game better, he starts to wonder if real life is destined to follow the comic books he loves where winning would be a guarantee. It's the arc he wants for this team's story, but will it happen?

Yang uses the theme of taking a step to tie these threads together in a powerful way, even using it to mark his own journey into a new phase of his career.

I was really blown away by how much I enjoyed this book, and I think all readers (basketball fans or not) will find something to love here.

I loved this book/story! Yang uses a new recipe to make this book - it's part history of basketball, part history of Bishop O'Dowd High School's journey to become CA State Champion winners (the school where Yang had taught for 17 years), and part meta exploration of the author's experience of putting this all of this together. It's a clever set up, and it really worked for me. I loved getting to know Gene Luen Yang better. I've been reading his work for years, and seeing this side of him was really enlightening.
There's a beautiful motif of taking the first step. I appreciate how Yang acknowledges the small but significant first steps people make to change their lives and to change lives of others. Others make it possible for us by opening doors that were previously closed, by bravely stepping outside their comfort zone.

Oooh! And jackpot at the end of the Advanced Reader Copy that I hope is in the published work... there are detailed notes about the choices Yang made throughout the book. Things he took liberty with and why, what was true dialogue and what was shaped. I LOVE reading an author's process. So cool.

Excited for students to read it.

Gene Luen Yang is back, and Dragon Hoops is a memoir of a year following the basketball team during the 2014-15 season at the high school where he taught, Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. Gene wants to write a new graphic novel - at the same time he's being courted by DC Comics to write a new Superman story - and he's wracking his brain, coming up with options. He isn't really a sports guy, but he decides to explore the Bishop O'Dowd varsity basketball team, after hearing all the buzz in the school hallways. He approaches the men's varsity coach, Lou Richie, and starts writing the story of the team, the story of the young men on the team, and the pursuit of the California State Championships.

I'm not a big sports fan, and you don't need to be to read Dragon Hoops. It's the story of the people behind the team, and it's exciting to read about these diverse young men, their stories, and their drive. It's great to see Gene Yang's journey from someone who has zero interest in sports to becoming a rabid fan of the team, because of the connections formed with the players and Coach Lou. It's also very much Gene Yang's story as he struggles with a work-life balance, whether or not to take on the extra work - and excitement! - that Superman would bring, and his struggle to address a difficult chapter in Bishop O'Dowd's history.

The artwork is realistic with a cartoony feel, and the dialogue and pacing is great. Gene Yang gets readers excited for each game, and builds relationships between reader and players/coaches by interspersing biographical chapters and pivotal games in the race for the championship. He has a powerful thread through each personal story, too: each character, including Yang, has a moment when they step outside their comfort zone to pursue something greater; something Yang uses a literal "step" to illustrate. Yang steps across the street from the classrooms to the gym to meet with Coach Lou; Coach Lou steps across the street to go from public school to Bishop O'Dowd as a teen; Sendra Berenson, the inventor of women's basketball in in 1892 took a step into a gymnasium to teach the young women in her care a new sport she'd read about; player Jeevin Sandhu, a student and practicing Sikh, takes a step into a Catholic high school so he can play basketball. Gene Yang includes the evolution of basketball from its creation to the present, and the big role of Catholic schools in high school basketball; both things I knew nothing about and found really interesting. Back matter includes comprehensive notes and a bibliography. Catch a preview of Dragon Hoops, courtesy of EW magazine.

A phenomenal masterwork from one of comics’ most important creators.

“Dragon Hoops” is the story of stepping into the unknown, taking chances, and playing to the best of one’s abilities. This might look like a “basketball book”—and there is plenty of basketball in it—but the heart of “Dragon Hoops” lies in its several rich and deeply affecting examples of individuals from unique backgrounds making differences and taking steps in their own lives and areas of interest (basketball or otherwise).

5 stars for “Dragon Hoops”!

Wow, who knew I would enjoy a non-fiction graphic novel about California high school basketball! This book is so well-written that it sucks you in immediately. Since it is based on something that the author actually experienced and researched, I found myself looking up information about the school, the team, and what happened. The art is great; I'm a huge fan of Yang's art. This book was great and I think has mass appeal, not just for basketball fans.

Absolutely excellent graphic novel/biography of a bay area high school basketball team and, at the same time, the author's career development and creative process. Even folks who have absolutely no interest in basketball (high school or otherwise) will find themselves on the edge of their seats as the Dragons progress through the season. E

I have loved Gene Luen Yang's 0ther books but unfortunately I was unable to read this because the images were blurry.

This graphic novel has something for everyone. I mean, I don't even like basket ball and haven't played since 6th grade when it was play or the school doesn't have a team (no pressure at all), but this book was highly engaging. Nonfiction, history, sports, social issues, and the art of storytelling are carefully woven together with deft pen strokes. Yang has a unique talent.

All library collections should have at least one copy of this book regardless of ages served.

Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for the Advanced Readers Copy.

"In a well-crafted story, everything makes sense." Gene Luen Yang, author/illustrator (and narrator/guide) in DRAGON HOOPS.

And graphic novels help us to make sense of these stories in ways that are both inviting and inclusive. A recurring word resonates through DRAGON HOOPS: "Step."

Get ready to step into a new graphic novel by an author/illustrator that brought classroom teacher's attention around the potential for graphic novels with AMERICAN BORN CHINESE.

As a Hero's Journey story, DRAGON HOOPS presents each and every step in the wraparound of Mr. Yang's experiences as a writer looking for a new idea after BOXERS & SAINTS (which. . .well. . .can we stop and talk about the year that both BOXERS and SAINTS ((part of a set)) were both nominated for the National Book Award?). The small illustration of Yang pulling his new book set out of a shipping box in 2013 will not be lost on readers/fans of the artist's work.

Mr. Yang must walk across a small sidewalk from the classrooms to the gym to approach Coach Lou Ritchie with an idea for a new story. That he has to walk down a flight of stairs and quips that the coach's office is like a dungeon will not be lost on students of the Hero's Journey for Crossing the Threshold and Entering into the Belly of the Whale (sometimes, in order to find a story, we have to go down and dig deep).

This is all in the Prologue to the story before entering into Chapter 1 named for Coach Lou. Here we see the graphic novel presenting in chapters that can be read and enjoyed (and. . .if they have to be analyzed).

Coach Lou's story takes us back to the mid-80s through his four years at the school he will eventually come back to as a history teacher (he tells Mr. Yang, "You have to know your past in order to create a future."). Chapter 1 brings the new head coach all the way to a new season in 2015 wherein the intersection of two lives come together to begin the story of a season.

But, first, moved by the words of Coach Lou in regard to past and present, Mr. Yang, the narrator, brings us a history lesson on the game of basketball. Our narrative becomes nonfiction text within the early parts of a graphic novel.

As we meet the principle players on the new team, Yang does not ignore the macro settings of the story in presenting the impact of Michael Brown upon the young Oakland players who want to make a statement. In this regard, DRAGON HOOPS presents setting in a way that invites conversations around geography and opportunity and social issues surrounding the team as they enter into what they hope to be a championship season.

One of the strengths of DRAGON HOOPS is Yang's recognition that he is working within panels and not on the planks of a hardwood floor. Nothing is lost in the basketball action in the graphic novel which will help with the page turning of the most reluctant reader who is interesting in basketball. What Kwame Alexander's THE CROSSOVER has done for basketball in verse, Gene Luen Yang's DRAGON HOOPS is set to do with vision.

Yang expertly selects palates and fonts and schemas to communicate flashback, another gift of this graphic novels in the hands of a genius author/illustrator.

With the Coach Phelps chapter, Yang takes us back to a professional basketball without a league and introduces in this backstory material a reference to The Harlem Globetrotters which will surely make a natural "ladder" (Dr. Teri Lesesne) with a new picture book by Don Tate about The Harlem Globetrotters (you read it here first. . .maybe).

The backstory on Coach Phelps (Coach Lou is predecessor) hints at the racial tensions in the early history of basketball expressed in the macro infiltrating into the micro. The narrator, Mr. Yang works through the tension of including the Phelps story in panels depicting a consultation with his wife who agrees to leave Phelps out of the story (even though he has been presented). We also see the intersection of the lives of Phelps and Yang as Mr. Yang was Phelps's replacement in the classroom after Phelps "makes the news."

What Yang is able to do in graphic novel format borders on both phenomenal and meta. When one of the players asks Mr. Yang (the writer of the story) to fix his hairline in the sketches Yang is creating, we, the reader get to see creative process and editing/revision happening in real time over the course of a few panels (something that could not happen in prose but sets here to demonstrate a decision Yang is making as a writer and as an artist to capture the unique identities of the players he is writing about in the book).

In Chapter 6, Gene Luen Yang takes the reader out of the action and conversations regarding touch coaching choices that seem to mirror the authors's own difficult choices to find balance and back to the origins of female basketball. Again tone and schema here signal to the reader that this is backstory to be brought forward and opens up more opportunities to extend DRAGON HOOPS beyond its covers to include more stories about the game and its history.

Yang invites female players to step into early history into the game that would eventually see both male and female leagues despite early holdings that playing the game of basketball would give females "ugly muscles" and "scowling faces." Georgeann Wells gets to take center court for this portion of the book and gives all readers an opportunity to to read (and see for the graphic novel format) a story within the storied sport they might not have otherwise read, seen, or heard.

Each player on the squad gets a turn in the graphic novel to have their backstory told by Yang who at this point is traveling with the team and on a journey of his own through the game of basketball and the balancing act of teaching, basketball, family, and comics.

When DC makes an offer to Yang to draw the new Superman series, we are reminded that we are reading into a real season in real time.

When Yang is confronted by his wife and his conscience (which shape shifts under the influence of the graphic novel's gift), readers get to see the complex decisions authors must make even in memoir to capture the essence of a story without taking an easy way out or leaving any part of a story out that really is integral to the whole.

If classroom teachers are still on the fence about what graphic novels can do, here are some talking points around DRAGON HOOPS:

Basketball
Writing/Drawing
Storytelling
Backstory
Nonfiction Elements
Allusions
Complexity and Tension between the Macro, Meso, and Micro settings.
Social Issues and Themes
Awareness and Empathy

Taking that first step toward challenge, growth, and eventual change.

If we're talking about reading depth and stamina, the digital ARC of this graphic novel was about 450 pages with the embedded nonfiction elements serving to take the place of multiple illustrated texts on subjects related to, and of interest to, players and fans of basketball.

DRAGON HOOPS is a gift to the graphic novel format for its ability to utilize its panels as portals to the past creating paths back to the present. What could have been multiple volumes, Yang has seemingly compressed into a most accessible book that keeps the action going even when it seems to leave the court action to become, once again, a "book."

Reluctant readers are going to have a hard time putting DRAGON HOOPS on the bench. It is sure to get hot-passed from hand to hand, reader to reader. Someone (a librarian or classroom teacher need only put the ball into play).

Oh. . .and let's talk about all of those panels wherein the MacArthur Genius Grant recipient recalls early experiences with comics (Superman) and the narrator's sleeping attire (Superman) and the multiple references to the DC deal that brings DRAGON HOOPS full-circle with the new Superman series (which offers more extended reading to young adult readers).

All of these gifts of the graphic novel. . .and, in particular, THIS graphic novel are the products the gifts and talents of a classroom teacher become graphic novel artist. Like we wouldn't notice, Mr. Yang (I know that you are not comfortable with the nicknames).

I read a digital copy of this title for an early review. We will definitely be adding DRAGON HOOPS to our Room 407 classroom library.