 When I read through the playbook, reading through it, and then looking through some of his notes about who he's quoted and who's in the book, made me think of a Maya Angelou poem. The poem is, Ain't They Bad and Ain't They Black? And I was sharing that I think when that poem was out, it was really revolutionary, right? This idea that you would think specifically about African-Americans and talk about them and highlight it and have it be kind of controversial. And I think, and my question is, are we in that state still today? Do people still kind of react and like, hey, wait, that book is mostly about black people. Is that a bad thing or is it a good thing? Or have we normalized now where it's like, oh, it's okay, no big deal. It's mostly black people in that book. That's a great question. It's a loaded question. It's an interesting way to start this whole thing, isn't it? Well, we don't have much time. We gotta get to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter, another Maya Angelou reference. Wow. I do love me some Maya. Let me see if I can complete the triumvirate. Yes, right. So I remember growing up and never being told that you were other or marginalized or different than anyone else. Like I remember growing up in a house where you were black and that's who you were and you should always act like you deserve to be in whatever room you were in and don't let anyone tell you anything other. Ebony Trap, dark, black and lovely, brown, mocha jumpin', double black, brown, night black, out of sight, black, so black, purple, black, blue, black, black, blue, black, black, brown, Moroccan, mellow, yellow, black, brown, positive, chocolate, black, free, black. So I kinda grew up never thinking about black being anything other than as human as anyone else. A friend of mine texted me this morning. She said she was in San Jose and she couldn't make it but she had a question. She's like, Kwame, why do people treat writers of color so bad? Like crap. And I was like, you know, people are who they are. They do what they do and people treat you how you allow them to treat you. I say, if you walk like you got goldmines between the meeting of your thighs, then perhaps they're gonna walk around thinking, okay, wow, that person shines, you know? But if you walk around thinking you're other and marginalized and reluctant and disengaged and all these other labels that people put on you, I think that's how you're gonna be treated. So I don't know if that's the answer to your question, but this idea of being black or being a person of color is normal, is it normalized now? It's always been normalized to me. And that's why I try to write and that's what I try to write about so that other children will be able to see that as well. Thank you. So to dial it back and to start more in a kind of like, you know, I could just be like, what got you started writing? Now let's keep going. But when you talk about normalizing, when did you normalize writing, right? This idea and notion of celebrating who you are or just talking about people? Wow, that's a great question. So my parents were writers. My father was an educator and a writer. He had written 16 books, these huge educational tomes and that none of us wanted to read and that all of us, my siblings and I were forced to read. Yeah, it's true, girl. And my mother was an English teacher and so books were a big part of our lives and I didn't care for them because it grown up in this house where books were a punishment and a reward. So we were immersed in language and literature nonstop and it was so bad that I recall, you're 11 years old and you're being forced to read Pedagogy of the Oppress. How, you know, it doesn't get any worse than that. And so I remember coming home from college freshman year every Thanksgiving, from the time that I can remember my parents on Thanksgiving we drove to New York from Virginia and we drove in the New Jersey Turnpike and we had dinner on Thanksgiving night at Hunan Park too, or 92nd in Columbus. It's a Chinese restaurant. That was our Thanksgiving dinner. Every Thanksgiving it was a family ritual. We stayed at the Stoffers Hotel in Westchester and we had dinner at Hunan Park and on that Friday my father held a book fair. Every Friday after Thanksgiving it was a book fair in Harlem and so that was our life. And so this one particular Thanksgiving freshman year I came home for Thanksgiving. We're driving up the New Jersey Turnpike and of course there are books, boxes of books in the trunk because those are the books for the book fair and sort of in our suitcases for the weekend are in the back seat with us, me and my two sisters. And so we're on the New Jersey Turnpike and all of us are knocked out. We're asleep, including my father, who's driving. Ooh. And we wake up to my mother screaming his nickname which was Ow, Ow! He wakes up and the car tumbles over. It says on the New Jersey Turnpike, it's exit nine and the car flips over, it's a red Thunderbird and it just flips and flips and it lands on its top and we're all just sort of sitting upside down. And I say, and everybody's fine apparently because the first words out of my mouth are, my father's a Baptist minister also. The first words out of my mouth are, damn! Sorry, parents. And my father says, watch your language. And then we all get out the car, the door or through the window. My mother's in a little bit of shock but everybody's okay and the next words out of my father after he checks on us is he says, go get all the books. And so I'm in the middle of the New Jersey Turnpike with 18 wheelers behind us. Like we've shut down the Turnpike and I'm picking up books and putting them back in the crates and so I tell people all the time, I don't think I found writing. I think it found me. I didn't have a choice. Right, that's pretty impressive. I think that that puts a priority on books, right? Literacy, like this subconscious. It's obsessive. Yeah. I mean, you just had an accident. So yeah, it's definitely a priority. Power of books. Power of books. But you said something about books as a punishment and so when I look at the playbook, when I think about crossover, do you think that you're using those experiences to try and engage young people in reading so that it doesn't feel punitive? Absolutely. I mean, I remember what it was like to be a kid who was caught reluctant by my teachers but of course I was well read. I just hated it. And so of course the teachers and the librarians weren't giving me books that I was interested in either. They, like my parents, were giving me these books that I was not interested in. Tuck everlasting. So I didn't want to read these books and so when I set out to write books, I set out to write poems and stories and books that were entertaining, number one, were engaging so that after you read it, perhaps you might want to pick up another one of my books or another book and empowering. And so that after you sort of had this experience, you want to do something, like you feel changed in some significant way. And that comes out of having read and spent a lot of time with the poets and the writers from the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. Who always believed that writing was about entertainment and engagement, but it was also about resisting. I got up this morning feeling good and black thinking black thoughts, I did black things, like played all my black records and minded my own black business. I put on my best black clothes, walked out my black dough and Lord have mercy, white snow. And so of course when Jackie Early wrote that poem in 1968 and the heat of the Black Arts Movement, it was a funny poem, but it was a serious poem at the same time. And so having that juxtaposition, that's always been important to me to sort of have a good time with the words, let the words jump off the page, but also make you feel some way that you weren't feeling before you sat down to read that particular piece. You talk about the Harlem Renaissance, I was thinking, do you think there's a renaissance of sorts just with this idea and notion of diverse books? And so I think about the last few Newberry metal winners that I know in terms of like Matt De La Pena, Jackie Woods and yourself, do you think that there's a renaissance happening in terms of books? And the idea and notion of them, or is it just being elevated in terms of how people respond to it? Yeah, I think people are responding a little bit differently. I mean, it's a process, it's a journey. I mean, you think of where our country is. The Civil War was in 1865. And so we really haven't had a whole lot of time when you think about the Civil War and Reconstruction and Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement. We haven't had a whole lot of time that's passed by for us to sort of figure out how to become America. How to become what America can be. It's not that much time that has passed by. We're getting there. And so this idea of diverse books, which has been, I guess in its most recent incantation, the We Need Diverse Movement, We Need Diverse Books Movement, WNDB, is so important and so necessary, but it's a part of a continuum of writers and publishers and publishing professionals and activists who have wanted more diverse authors included in the mix, who've wanted more books on the shelves, representative of America for a long time. But I think, yeah, the more we do it, the more elevated our responses and appreciation and engagement becomes. And so I think it's just getting better. It's the natural way of things. At least I thought it was getting better until November 8th. But that's a whole nother story. Well, you talk about, and I know you've got, you put some music to words and you do that. I was thinking about, I just told a friend a couple of weeks ago, I feel like Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper and they're maybe ushering in this new kind of idea and notion of spoken word. What do you think about the artist that this movement of the spoken word and having a more, the conscientious rapper and how it relates to some of the work that you do? I mean, again, I think it's on a continuum. Like you can't have Chance the Rapper unless you have a Lupe fiasco. You can't have a Lupe in a common unless you have a public enemy. You can't have a rested development unless you have a public enemy. All that stuff is on a continuum. And so I think it's, I mean, I think it's just, it's wonderful and it's necessary and I think it's natural and it should be happening. But I don't see it as anything totally new. I love what Kendrick does, you know? And I love what Tupac did. And I see those things, they're on a similar sort of continuum of social protest of becoming sort of trying to use language and literature and a beat to become, to share what's happening in our communities and to become and allow other people to become more human hopefully after hearing it. I mean, you can't listen to keep your head up, you know, without sort of feeling something. Yeah, you talked about, you just mentioned the word human and we were talking a little bit earlier about civil rights and somebody, I've been in this debate with someone recently about if there's a difference between human rights and civil rights and should we only use the word human rights because it incorporates civil rights. And you think about, again, the folks that you highlight in the playbook and the quotes and the work that they had to do that was outside of really what people thought about as human rights and civil rights and that message that you speak about without calling it out specifically without saying that, like this idea and notion, do you think there's a difference or do you think that you have to still call them out separately? I don't get caught up in all that. I don't, I mean, I am about the business of trying to make the world a better place by hopefully impacting young people and showing them how words are cool and showing them how words can make them a better person and showing how they can imagine, you know, what's possible in their lives through words. I don't get caught up in sort of all the minutia of all that. I just don't. So that's probably not the answer you were looking for. No, it's, I agree. I'm like, it's about the work, right? Not about what it's called. It's about the work. Let's put in the work. So when you think about the people that you highlight and talk about in the book, how did you choose them? Was it a process? Did you go through and say, this makes sense or this fits here? Because there's a wealth of information in there, right? And how do you kind of go through just the hundreds of thousands of millions of quotes that you could have used? So the playbook is based on the basketball rules in the crossover. The crossover was the first novel and verse that I wrote. And it was about two boys who were star, their twin brothers, stars on and off the court. And their father, who's this really funny, cool, wise cat, he offers these basketball rules for life to his sons. Things like, when you find yourself on a fast break, hustle, leap, and slam dunk the opportunity. When the game is on the line, don't fear, grab the ball, take it to the hoop. So he's constantly saying these things to his 12-year-old boys. And in their mind, it's like, what are you talking about? Because I remember that growing up with my grandparents and my father, my father would say things like, you can't know what you don't know. It's true. Like, what are you talking about? Or my grandmother would say things like, you know, boy, dishwater gives back no images. And I think, kid, those kind of things, they impact. I mean, I still remember it. And of course, I get it now. I remember going into a big meeting with Scholastic after the Newberry and meeting with all these higher ups and remembering something my father has said, act like you belong to be in the room. So I still remember all these things, even to this day. And I think that sometimes our children don't have that luxury. They haven't been afforded those sort of wise nuggets and axioms because of screen time. Because we've gotten a little bit far removed from that. And so the idea behind the playbook was hustle, dig, grind, push, run fast, change, pivot, chase, grab, aim, shoot, play harder, practice harder, work smart, live smarter. Was to sort of bring back some of those things that were happening to us as children and do it in a way where kids would be able to sort of look at the book and say, oh, I want to check that out, open it up, and sort of get that sports metaphor for life and be engaged with it. So the sports is the hook. The basketball and the soccer and the football is the hook because what we're really talking about is how do I become a better person? Why is family important? How do I become a better friend? How do I not pout so much? So some things that our children need to learn. I tried to do it in that kind of way. And I figured, well, let's lace that with stories of athletes that inspired me as I was growing up, people like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who invented a hook shot because they wouldn't let him dunk in college. Who, Wilma Rudolph, who had polio. And so she had no use of her left leg as a child and ended up becoming an Olympic track star. So these people who overcame these significant odds, perhaps they can be inspiration for young people just like they were for me. So rule 14, never let anyone lower your goals. Others' expectations of you are determined by their limitations of life. The sky is your limit. Always shoot for the sun and you will shine. Oh yeah, I remember that. So when I was two years old, my father took me to a basketball court in Harlem. I was born in Manhattan and he was attending Columbia and he took me to about a playground. And he gave me a ball and told me to shoot a free throw at two years old. The ball was bigger than me. And there was a guy working on the playground who said, yo, you can't have that boy trying to shoot that ball. He's too little. My father said, it's good. And the guy came over, he worked on the playground. He had a screwdriver or something, a wrench. He was going to lower the goal. And my father told him, no. And the man told him, you're crazy. And my father said, he doesn't know he can't make it. You know? And I think our children at their very core are yes oriented. They are about trying to make things happen in life. The only reason they become no people is because we tell them they can't do it. Or we don't show them that they can do it. Or we don't give them the tools and the resources and the encouragement to do it. And so I think, yeah, never let anyone lower your goals. So it's a huge thing that we gotta remember as the adults in their lives, whether we're the librarians or parents or teachers. Yeah. Yeah. So along those lines, this being kind of a tech base in this area. And one of the things that we hear about innovation is this idea and notion of failure, right? Like you keep trying, you mess up, you keep trying, you mess up, because you're gonna hit it. So then it might look like a long shot, but you'll never make it if you don't keep shooting. Right? And that idea of you keep trying, you keep shooting, you'll never make it if you don't shoot. Where did that come from? You know, is that just, again, some old saying that? Well. So that's interesting. This might be a good time. I wish there was a musician in the audience. Because I really wanna illustrate this with some music. There was a guitar. Is there a musician in the audience? There's somebody with a guitar. There's somebody with a guitar. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. So I had written this novel about a basketball player and had submitted it to a publisher. And the publisher told me, no, it's not gonna work. We're not interested in publishing that. And so I rewrote the novel, because I really believed it was my 15th, 14th, or 15th book that I had written. And I sent it back and I got another no. And I rewrote it again. And I sent it back and they said, please stop sending this to us. And so I was sort of at that point where I was like, it's done, it's a wrap, they don't like it. And something said, go back to your favorite writing place, a place called Panera Bread. And rewrite it again. And so I rewrote it again. And I sent it back to, I sent it to 18 other publishers. And I got 18 responses and all of them said, you've written a book about basketball and girls aren't gonna read that. And you've written a book about basketball and it's told in poems. You told a story in poems and boys don't read poetry. And so all of them said, we're not gonna publish this book. So I had like 19 rejections. And so at that point I was sort of done. Can you read that one again? It might look like a long shot, but you'll never make it if you don't keep shooting. And so I was done, I was done shooting. Okay? And then I said, well, you know what? Let me give it one more shot. I'm gonna try to self publish this book because I believed in it that much. And so I decided to take one more shot. And I think a week later I got an email and it was from a publisher by the name of Houghton Mifflin. And they said, Kormie, we read your story. Everyone on our staff loved it and we'd be honored to publish it. Okay, so I had gone through five years of taking shots and no one, and the shot's not going in. And finally I had gotten this yes after five years. And so the book got published. And I started traveling around the United States and then traveling around the world and reading stories from this book to young people about this boy named Josh who has long hair and who's a basketball fanatic and his brother JB who's his twin who has short hair. And his brother JB loves Michael Jordan, loves basketball and he loves Tibet, the bet part one. We're down by seven at halftime. Trouble owns our faces, but coach isn't worried, says we haven't found our rhythm yet. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, Vondie starts dancing the snake. Only he looks like a seal. And then coach blasts his favorite dance music. And before you know it, we're all doing the cha-cha slide. JB high-fives me with a familiar look. You want a bet, don't you I ask? Yep, he says and then he touches my hair. If my hair were a tree, I'd climb it. I'd kneel down beneath and enshrine it. I'd treat it like gold and then mine it. Each day before school, I unwind it. And right before games, I entwine it. These locks on my head, I designed it. And one last thing, if you don't mind it, that bet you just made, I decline it. The bet part two. If I lose the bet you want to what? If the score gets tied, he says in. If it comes out to the last shot, he says in. If I get the ball, he says in. If I don't miss, he says in. I get to cut off all your hair. Sure, I say you can cut my hair off, but if I win the bet, you have to walk around with no pants, no underwear tomorrow during lunch. Okay, okay, how about if you win, if you lose, I'll cut one lock. And if you win, I will moon that group of six graders that sit in their art table at lunch. And even though I used to be one of those six graders, and even though I love my hair the way dad loves Krispy Kreme, and even though I don't want us to lose this game, odds are this is one of JB's legendary bets that I'll win because that's a lot of ifs. The game is tied when JB soft jumper sails tick through the air, talk, the crowd stills tick, miles drop, talk, and when his last second shot tick hits all net, talk, the clock stops, the gym explodes, it's hard bleachers empty, and my head aches. In the locker room, after the game, JB cackles like a crow. He walks up to me grinning, holds his hands out, so I can see the red scissors from coach's desk smiling at me, they're still blades sharp and ready. I love this game, like winter loves snow, even though I spent the final quarter in foul trouble on the bench. JB was on fire, and we won, and I lost the bet. Time to pay up, filthy JB says, laughing and waving the scissors in the air like a flag. My teammates gather around to salute, fill thee, fill thee. He opens the scissors, grabs my hair to slash a strand. I don't hear my golden lock hit the floor, but I do hear the sound of calamity. When Vondie hollers, oh snap, calamity, an unexpected undesirable, often physically injurious event. As in, if JB hadn't been acting so silly and playing around, he would have cut one lock instead of five and avoided this calamity. As in, the huge ball patch on the side of my head is a dreadful calamity. As in, after the game, mom almost has a fit when she sees my hair. What a calamity, she says, shaking her head and telling dad to take me to the barber shop on Saturday to have the rest of it cut off. And so, I started traveling and reading these poems and a year passed and one day I'm sitting in my basement and I'm working on a new book. And it's a book about a 12 year old boy who loves soccer and he hates reading. And I'm writing the story and he hates reading because his father makes him read the dictionary. And he likes a girl and he's getting bullied and he meets a really cool librarian who's seven feet tall. And the librarian understands, Cheryl, that books are like amusement parks and sometimes you have to let the kids choose the rides. And this librarian changes his life. The librarian's name is the Mac. Y'all can stamp if you want. You can fill in, Cheryl. The Mac drinks tea in a dragonfly mug on the library floor. Is the dragonfly? Mug. Mug. Well, Cheryl. Oh, sorry, I thought we were doing a rhyming. The Mac drinks tea in a dragonfly mug on the library floor. Is the dragonfly? Mug. The door is covered and dragonfly picks cuz skip to the Mac is dragonfly sick. Sometimes I wear a dragonfly hat. Got dragonfly this and dragonfly. That. Dragonfly this and dragonfly. Dragonfly this and dragonfly. Around my room are dragonfly clocks but please don't touch my dragonfly box. Y'all are good. And so I finished writing this book at about 11 30 p.m. on February the 1st. And then my wife says I'm going to bed and she goes to bed and I stay up and now it's February 2nd. It's about one o'clock and I'm watching reruns of Walking Dead and then I get hungry so I make some pancakes and then I get thirsty so I drink some root beer. Now it's about three o'clock and then I start listening to some jazz music and I'm feeling pretty good because I finished this new book and then about 6 a.m. I go upstairs and I get in the bed and about 7, 16 a.m. my phone rings and I look at, I wake up, I look at the phone. I've been asleep for an hour. I look at the phone and it says no caller ID and I'm like, who's calling me at 7, 16 a.m. in the morning. And my wife jumps up in bed and she says get it. And I answer the phone and the caller says, I'm calling from the 2015 Newberry and Metal Committee. And I'm like, oh, this is probably gonna be a good call. And he says, I'm calling to tell you that you're booked the crossover and as soon as he says that, like my life flashes in front of me and I start thinking about all the books my father made me read. And he says, we're calling to tell you that you're booked the crossover and all I could think about was the 19 rejections. And what if I had stopped taking the shot? Would I be getting this call? And he says, we're calling to tell you that you're booked the crossover is the recipient of the 2015 John Newberry Metal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. And I hear nothing else he says because in my left ear, my wife says, oh my gosh. I think sometimes we gotta sort of remember that the nose are a part of life. We gotta just embrace the nose. They're gonna happen as to the way the universe works. I think the cool thing is that once all the nose come to the party and they're tired and they go home, what's left? The yes and all you need is what? You just need one. I think we cannot be defined by other people's nose. I think we gotta always remember y'all that we gotta remember to be a star. Randy, let's give him one last song since you're up here. Cheryl, can we do one more? Okay. Okay. Be a star. Be a star. In your mind. In your mind. Day and night. Come on, San Francisco. Night. Louder. Let it shine. Let it shine. Be a star. In your mind. Day and night. Let it shine. Y'all, that's Randy Preston. Thank you so much, Randy. That was a long answer, right? That was the best answer. He got me going. I'm sorry, I was a little excited. So I'm not sure Christy, how are we on? Is Christy still in here on time? But I just, you know, I have to say as a person who taught kindergarten and second grade and worked with middle and high school students, the power of words and books are phenomenal and thank you so much for putting pen to paper and encouraging just through all the different books, right? That writing and reading doesn't have to be boring or punitive, but that it can be powerful. So thank you for doing that. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you.