"For twelve-year-old Autumn Holloway, a week at Blazing Hoops wheelchair basketball camp is a dream come true. She has high hopes that it will be her ticket to making friends and connections in the adaptive sports community. But Autumn struggles to fit in with her wealthier fellow campers. To make matters worse, she has to use a borrowed basketball wheelchair that keeps needing repairs. It takes a chance encounter with the campus custodial staff to help Autumn realize that, no matter where she's from or how she speaks, she belongs at camp-and on the court-just as much as anyone else"--

Follows coach Jack O'Brien, who led Boston's Charlestown High School basketball team to victory in several state championships, and chronicles his relationship with two talented African-American basketball players.

May tells the absorbing story of the hopes and struggles of one high school basketball team, the Northeast High School Knights in Northeast, Georgia, and the powerful role that a basketball team can play in keeping young African American kids straight, away from street-life, focused on completing high school, and possibly even attending college.

An ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults New Bonus Content: -Q&A with Walter Dean Myers -Q&A with screenwriter John Ballard -Teaser chapter from On a Clear Day -Excerpt from 145th Street All eyes are on seventeen-year-old Lonnie Jackson while he practices with his team for a city-wide basketball Tournament of Champions. His coach, Cal, knows Lonnie has what it takes to be a pro basketball player, but warns him about giving in to the pressure. Cal knows because he, too, once had the chance—but sold out. As the tournament nears, Lonnie learns that some heavy bettors want Cal to keep him on the bench so that the team will lose the championship. As the last seconds of the game tick away, Lonnie and Cal must make a decision. Are they willing to blow the chance of a lifetime?

Shawn Harrington returned to Marshall High School as an assistant coach years after appearing as a player in the iconic basketball documentary film Hoop Dreams. In January of 2014, Marshall's struggling team was about to improve after the addition of a charismatic but troubled player. Everything changed, however, when two young men opened fire on Harrington's car as he drove his daughter to school. Using his body to shield her, Harrington was struck and paralyzed. The mistaken-identity shooting was followed by a series of events that had a devastating impact on Harrington and Marshall's basketball family. Over the next three years it became obvious that the dream of the game providing a better life had nearly dissolved. Author Rus Bradburd tells Shawn's story with empathy and care, exploring the intertwined tragedies of gun violence, health care failure, racial assumptions, struggling educational systems, corruption in athletics—and the hope that can survive them all.

The inspirational true story about the trials and victories of the Hope High School basketball team in inner-city Providence, Rhode Island. Hope High School in Providence, Rhode Island was once a model city school, graduating a wide range of students from different backgrounds. But the tumult of the 1960s and the drug wars of the 70s changed both Providence and Hope. Today, the aging school is primarily Hispanic and African-American, with kids traveling for miles by bus and foot each day. Hope was known for its state championship basketball teams in the 1960s, but its 2012 team is much different. Disobedient, distracted, and overwhelmed by family troubles, with mismatched sneakers and a penchant for profanity and anger, these boys represent Coach Dave Nyblom's dream of a championship, however unlikely that might seem. Nyblom's mostly black players, including several who emigrated to Providence from war-torn Liberia, face gang violence, domestic uncertainty, drug problems, and a host of other issues. But with the unfailing support and guidance of Nyblom and other Hope coaches, their ragtag team gradually pulls together, overcoming every obstacle to find the faith and trust in themselves that Nyblom never stops teaching. A look at a hidden world that just a few hundred yards from Brown University, Bill Reynolds's Hope is the inspiring true story of young men and their mentors pursuing one goal—a championship—but achieving so much more.

Revolving around fascinating, complex characters, "The Assist" is a riveting portrait of a driven basketball coach at an iconic high school and of his players, each struggling to rise above the many forces pulling them down.