Beastly Basketball

by Lauren Johnson, Eduardo García (Illustrator)

Joe knows kung fu. In fact, he loves it more than anything. Every single evening, Joe walks to his neighborhood kung fu studio to practice for hours on end... until the day he arrives to find his studio is closed--permanently. Unperturbed, Joe decides to pursue his second-favorite activity--basketball. He joins his school's team only to find that the players are disorganized, timid, and lacking in discipline! So, Joe uses his experience in martial arts to bring out the best--or beast!--in his teammates by assigning each player a particular style of kung fu that suits their personalities. Will their newfound skills lead to flawless victory, or will they continue to get beaten to the punch?

Genres: Graphic Novels, Sports

72 pages, Library Binding

First published July 1, 2014

About the author

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Reviews

[Daniel Garcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

reason happen more sport good basketball going team step nice cool student good fun. This captain that tell you come on game good?

[Tatiana Malone]

it story about basketball sport. Joe join basketball in GYM.
they act like animals basketball. coach is suspicious because joe throw one person head. he need practice. they is won.

[Boen Sherman]

Beastly Basketball by Sports Illustrated
The Cavaliers are playing the Beasts in the championship game. The Beasts take the final shot of the game! The book starts 3 months earlier at tryouts before the season and the Beasts only have 4 players. When all of a sudden a new guy named Joe, a kung foo master walks into the locker room. Joe’s kung foo instructor used to make all the kids warm up by playing basketball behind the back of the building. This is how he got all of his skills on the court.
The thing I enjoyed most about the book was the way the team played together. At the start, they believed they had no chance of winning a championship. But as the season continued their teamwork kept on improving. The team made different jerseys of animals and that's how they named themselves the Beasts. Every player played in a way like the animal on their jerseys. Even in the championship game, Joe had his teammate boost him into the air so he could fly like the bird on his jersey, and dunk the ball, their chemistry was unmatched!
Another enjoyment I had was the pages and pictures of the book. I liked that the pages weren’t filled with words all over them. I also liked that the images were very detailed to what the book was talking about. For example, when the book talks about the players' jerseys and how they all have different animals on them, you can see that very clearly. Also, when Joe dunked the basketball the picture of the gym and all the fans cheering was very cool and almost made me feel like I was there.
Overall, I think that Beasly Basketball was a very good book to read with lots of cool pages. As I mentioned before I loved the pictures and chemistry that the team used to win the championship against the Cavaliers. I think I also like the book even more because I love playing sports and watching basketball games. Lastly, I recommend this book to anyone especially recommend this book to someone who loves sports.

[Max Sindahl]

Beastly Basketball by Sports Illustrated
The book starts with 4 kids waiting for the basketball try outs to start. There are not enough kids but then one kid shows up last second that was invited by the coach a few weeks earlier. The kid tells the backstory on how he got there and how he is good at basketball. The practice did not go very well. Them alone are good players but working together as a team is where they struggle. After some team exercises they start to go on a win streak. They go to the championship game against the undefeated team and I will let you read what happens next.
One thing that I liked about this book is how all of the players get a different animal. They get these animals based on their personalities. On the cover of the book you can see their shadows as the animals they are representing. One is goofy and agile like a monkey, another is as fluid and has great timing like a snake, there is one that is ferocious and stealthy like a tiger, 4th one is quick and sneaky like a praying mantis, and the last one is swift and graceful like a crane. That is one thing I like about the book.
But one thing I don't like about this book is how fast it goes through games. Also the characters arent really different from one another except for a few and the animals they have gotten. Everything goes to fast and before you know it they are in the championship game undefeated. The way that they play the game is also not really realistic and some things they do are just against the rules. There is something that I didn't like about this book and that is most of the book.
In conclusion this book overall isn't a good book. I can see it could be good to some people and probably mostly to kids. I wouldn't recommend this book to many people. I would recommend finding a different book instead of reading this one. Those are my thoughts on this book.

[Karen Arendt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exciting graphic novel that will appeal to reluctant readers

[Stephanie Gerstner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really good book. Great story. Great characters.

[Mason Wang · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was about a group of 5 boys named Joe, Tim, Kyle, Oscar and Thomas. The five of them all played on the basketball team together and although they were talented individually they couldn't quite come together as a team. Joe had a background in Kung Fu so the coach had him teach the rest of the team Kung Fu. When this happened they all found their individual strengths and they were able to come together as a team and have an undefeated season.
I would recommend this book for other people to read, it is a great story about how 5 individuals come together for the greater good of the group to achieve a perfect season. This is a truly inspiring story where middle school kids put the needs of the team ahead of their own.

[Nai Nes · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my opinion, this is that type of book that you would read for fun every once in a while.

[KWOK William · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think i very like this book, because it have kung fu and basketball combine

[Caleb Cotton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book Beastly Basketball was really good. In Beastly Basketball, the team couldn’t remember any of the plays and they needed to come with a strategy to get better and to play as a team. So, a new player name Joe who use to do kung Fu did some team exercises until they could do the moves together. My basketball team was the same way and one way that our coach got us to remember the plays was he would make us do an exercise every time we messed up so it would make us not want to mess up. In the book, Joe gave his team animal names that related to them. In my football season our coach did the same thing and my nickname was a poison snake because I was tiny, but fierce. I would rate this book 4 out of 5 stars because everything was perfect, but I just wish it was longer.

[emyrose8 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can tell my basketball lovers are going to like this book. Not a lot of depth to the story, but it's enough of one to hook the reluctant readers. Excellent guided questions about the illustrations at the end!

[Frank DeGidio]

it was a good book because they became good friends and one of the characters did a cool dunk