SCHOOL OF ROCK
Newbery medalist Kwame Alexander on music, race, and the power of poetry
WHEN KWAME ALEXANDER talks, you can sense something just under the surface—laughter, maybe, or swagger—dying to burst forth. It’s the same vibe the 12-year-old protagonist of his Newbery Medal-winning 2014 novel-in-verse, The Crossover, exudes on the basketball court. (Alexander, 48, was a baller himself: “I was No. 1 on the tennis team,” he says. “I beat everybody.”) Raised in New York City and later Virginia by literary types—publisher dad, English teacher mom—Alexander has produced two dozen titles, from a collection of Tupac essays he edited to poetry volumes and children’s picture books. Solo,
