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Scholastic Canada
ISBN 978-0-545-05574-1
288 pages
Ages 12 and up
5" x 7"

by Walter Dean Myers

Seventeen-year-old Greg "Slam" Harris can do it all on the basketball court. He's quick enough to handle the point guard slot and, as his tag implies, he can slam dunk at will. His temper is like his game, hard and fast.

Slam's grades aren't so hot, though. He knows it, but he doesn't want to hear it. And when his teachers jam his troubles in his face, he blows up.

Slam has seen ballplayers come and go and knows he could be one of the lucky ones. Maybe he'll make it all the way to the big arenas, or maybe, like his man Ice, he'll stumble along the way. He never doubted himself on the court until he found himself going one-on-one with his own future, and he didn't have the ball.

Newbery honour author Walter Dean Myers calls on his own Harlem background in this raw and gritty story of a young basketball player coming of age and trying to make it on the unforgiving courts of the city.


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Excerpt from SLAM!
by Walter Dean Myers

Our next game was on Saturday but we all had to go to school first and then take a school bus downtown to Trinity. I liked riding in the bus to the game because it felt good when you showed up and got off the bus and everybody from the other school was looking at you.

Me and Ducky sat in the back. Jimmy sat in the front with Goldy and the coach. We had our little band with us, too. Me and Ducky were talking about the football play-offs and wondering if it was going to snow. That's what we were talking about but I was really thinking about what Mtisha had said the day before, that I was scared of math. I didn't think that I was scared of math because math couldn't do anything to me. It didn't make sense to be scared of it, but then there was Ducky. Ducky acted like he was scared of basketball. I was ready to run some good doing stuff down on him about it when Nick came on the bus. He saw me in the back of the bus and came to the back.

"How's it going?" Ducky said to him.

"Okay," he said.

"You ready for the game?" Ducky asked.

"I guess so." Nick said to me, "Look, Slam, let me be up front. The coach called me last night and said that a college scout is coming to see me today. I can't look good if you and I aren't playing together."

"A scout from what college?" Ducky asked.

"Brown," Nick said. "Up in Providence."

"Brown?" Ducky looked at me. "They play Ivy League, and they can't even win there."

"I can't afford to go there without a scholarship," Nick said. "I can't afford to go most places with a scholarship."

"Goldy said the Ivy League schools didn't give athletic scholarships," Ducky went on.

"They don't, but if I can play ball for them I know I'll get in," Nick said, looking at me.

"Good luck," I said.

Nick slid out of his seat and went up front. Ducky went back to the conversation about if it was going to snow or not. He was saying that his grandmother had a pain in her hip every time it was going to snow.

My mind drifted to what Nick was saying. The coach had called him and told him that a scout was coming to see him play. How come he wasn't coming to see me play? In a way it hurt, because I could see Nick was getting a chance that I wasn't getting. He was asking me to help him look good to get what I thought I should get.

"Hey! Slam, you awake?" Ducky was talking to me.

"What?"

"What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing, really."

"I was asking you about how your grandmother was," he said. "Didn't you say she was sick?"

"Yeah, she's not doing that good," I said. "My mom doesn't think she's gonna make it."

"That's rough."

"Yeah, it is."

From SLAM!. Copyright © by Walter Dean Myers

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"Great book, awesome for basketball fans." Janesh R., Age 12, U.S.A., Rating: 8

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