Black Diamond Kings: Heroes of Negro League Baseball

Smith’s entries vary in rhyme scheme and cadence, effortlessly evoking the personality of the player as well as his approach to the game in memorable, dynamic fashion… .Brandon’s art provides as much variety as the text, moving between elegantly detailed photorealism and more exaggerated figures and conceptual motifs… .Each spread is a celebration of the skill and power displayed on the field, showing the players as larger-than-life figures, but the book takes care to balance that joy with an acknowledgement of the larger societal context in which the men played and the discrimination they faced.—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (starred review)Strong words and pictures add up to a sweet double play.—Kirkus ReviewsShort poems and eye-catching illustrations introduce 12 great players from the Negro Leagues… A surefire hit for baseball fans young and old, and a resource for social studies, history, and language arts.—School Library JournalThe poems include a variety of styles and are brief, energetic, and filled with onomatopoeic words like pop and swat that evoke action and excitement. The illustrations do an especially effective job of capturing motion and movement, elongating players’ limbs or distorting bodies to emphasize the amazing athleticism and physical feats.—Booklist

Charles R. Smith Jr. is the author of sports poetry titles such as Hoop Kings, Hoop Kings 2: New Royalty, Hoop Queens, Hoop Queens 2, and Soccer Queens, as well as Pick-Up Game, Chameleon, Major Taylor, illustrated by Leo Espinosa, and the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali, illustrated by Brian Collier. He is also the recipient of the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for his photographs in My People, an adaptation of the Langston Hughes poem. Charles R. Smith Jr. lives in New York.

Adrian Brandon is an artist and designer fueled by spreading positive social change through visual storytelling. He lives in Brooklyn.