Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 02/15/2020 *Starred Review* There’s a line between sports and American comics that is seldom crossed. Leave it to Yang to take the crucial step, capturing not only the excitement of basketball but something deep and universal about it, even as he parallels it with his own journey. Yang teaches at California’s Bishop O’Dowd High School, home to the Dragons, a basketball team with a hallowed and, as it turns out, complicated history. Over and over again, the team almost wins State. Pursuing material for his next graphic novel, Yang surprises himself by latching onto the team and its long-time coach, Lou Richie. Yang traces the team’s high-stakes season through the players but also delves into the history of basketball itself, touching on the sociopolitical forces that shaped it and—to no surprise for Yang’s readers—the way race figures into both. Yang is an extraordinary cartoonist; his clean, clear, deceptively simple figures and compositions transmit emotions both subtle and powerful. Combining visual flair, like speeding backgrounds, with nearly diagrammatic movement, he creates pulse-pounding game sequences. Most important, through recurring visual motifs that connect a champion basketball player to a self-questioning artist to a Russian immigrant with a new idea, he illuminates the risks that every one of us must take and has, once again, produced a work of resounding humanity.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Seven years after best-selling, award-winning Yang's last release as both author and artist, his return is getting a big push, including a national author tour. Expect some March Madness around this one. - Copyright 2020 Booklist.