“‘A Slammerific Shot’: Gamefulness and Playfulness in Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, ” Letterature d’America, n. 196-197, 2023, pp. 121- 142.

The Crossover is a children’s verse novel by African American author Kwame Alexander, published in 2014; its narrator, a twelve-year-old basketball player called Josh Bell, narrates his team’s progress into the county championship, as well as his symbiotic but fraught relationship with his twin JB, and his personal growth when he is faced with serious family concerns. In this article, I investigate the tension between content and form in The Crossover, which I see as resolved in the relationship between basketball (i. e., a sport/game) and playfulness, the latter meant as a set of aesthetic devices employed by Alexander.