Two African American teens seemingly engaged in a friendly game of H.O.R.S.E. on the basketball court are actually engaged in a dazzling contest of imagination and one-upmanship as each comes up with increasingly outrageous ideas for shots. The first suggests he’ll “shoot a perfect layup, with my left … foot” from atop a 437-story building, after calculating the wind speed and direction. The other counters with his “Magellan” shot—one jump around the world. “As I approach the court, somewhere over New Jersey, I’ll raise back, open my mouth, dunk the ball through the basket there, with my tongue!” The first teen’s response: a shot involving a cloud, the moon, and the rings of Saturn. It’s all fun and games in Christopher Myers’s dynamic story, which has wit in both the wordplay and the art. The two characters’ speech is delineated by different colors of text, making the back-and-forth exchange easy to follow. (Ages 5–10)

One day at the basketball court, two kids, a familiar challenge--H.O.R.S.E.' But this isn't your grandmother's game of hoops. Not when a layup from the other side of the court, standing on one foot, with your eyes closed is just the warm-up.

Around the neighborhood, around the world, off Saturn's rings . . . the pair goes back and forth. The game is as much about skill as it is about imagination.

A slam dunk from award-winning author and illustrator Christopher Myers, H.O.R.S.E. is a celebration of the sport of basketball, the art of trash-talking, and the idea that what's possible is bounded only by what you can dream.