So, The Crossover. It is always hard to figure out what to read from this book, but there’s also some beauty in the fact that there are 200 poems here so you have a lot of choices, which I guess is probably part of the challenge, what to read to really represent. So, I’ll share this with you. I was writing this book and needed a word that meant pretty and didn’t want to use just pretty or, you know, gorgeous. I wanted to use a word, something cool, something different.
And so I looked in my thesaurus and sort of played around with it and finally came up with something that I thought would work. While Vandi [ph.] and JB debate whether the new girl is a knockout or just beautiful, a hottie or a cutie, a layup or a dunk, I finish my vocabulary homework and my brother’s vocabulary homework, which I don’t mind since English is my favorite subject and he did the dishes for me last week, but it’s hard to concentrate in the lunchroom with the girls’ step team practicing in one corner, a rap group performing in the other, and Vandi and JB waxing poetic about love and basketball.
So when they ask, “What do you think, Filthy?” I tell them she’s pulchritudinous, which is just the coolest word ever, but of course when I wrote that word, I said well, what middle school kid is going to know what pulchritudinous means? And so I said well, I should write another poem or at least give a definition, but then I wanted to keep the momentum of the story going so I figured maybe I should write a poem that includes the definition and still moves the story along.
Pulchritudinous, having great physical beauty and appeal as in every guy in the lunchroom is trying to flirt with the new girl because she’s so pulchritudinous; as in I’ve never had a girlfriend, but if I did, you better believe she’d be pulchritudinous; as in wait a minute, why is the pulchritudinous new girl now talking to my brother?
So, every time I go into a school to read The Crossover, kids will ask me, “What happened? What happened after the last shot? Did they make it? Are you writing a sequel?” And for the life of me I cannot figure out what that sequel would be, and I feel like I left it where it needs to be. However, I am writing a prequel about the father when he was 12, and I’m so excited. I’m so excited.
