Charles Smith, Jr., has created another dynamic collection of poems about basketball in Short Takes. Like Smith’s other books with a basketball focus, Rim Shots (1999) and Tall Tales (2000), both published by Dutton, Smith combines his motion-filled photographs with poems that jump, arc, dribble, and pound across each two-page spread. The photographs in the dazzling page design cannot be separated from the poems themselves — each piece is a blend of words and images. Smith’s wonderful note at the end of the book comments on how he created both the visual images and the written words for this volume and will be of special interest to aspiring artists and writers. (Age 10 and older)

In a basketball game, the mind flows. Later, memory serves up moments -- short takes. Here are twelve poems delivered in short, quick lines that press and twist and streak their way downcourt toward their goal with practiced, impressive dexterity. The feeling is of the inner eye and ear, alert and awake, storing up memories. Competition is everywhere. Voices taunt, swagger, defend. Bodies dare and challenge. And yet, amid the heart-pounding action, the athletic stop-starts, come moments of quiet, even odd reflection -- the sound of sneakers on a wood floor, for instance.

Small photographs capture suspended moments and pattern their way across colorful backgrounds in accompaniment to the energetic images of the poetry. Once again drawing on the rhythms of jazz and hip-hop, Charles Smith offers a fitting companion to his previous two books about The Game: Rimshots, an ALA Notable Book, and the highly praised Tall Tales.