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ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: Beyond the Game: Maya Moore
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://andrewmaraniss.com/
CITY: Brentwood
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 396
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Madison, WI; son of David (a journalist and author) and Linda (an environmentalist) Maraniss; married, wife’s name Alison; children: two.
EDUCATION:Vanderbilt University, B.A., 1992.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Administrator, executive, and writer. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, men’s basketball media relations director, 1992-97, special projects coordinator in the Office of the Athletic Director, 2017—; Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Tampa, FL, media relations manager, 1998; McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations, Nashville, TN, associate, became partner, 1999-2017; contributor to ESPN’s TheUndefeated.com; commentator for radio and television shows.
AWARDS:Special Recognition, RFK Book Awards, and Lillian Smith Book Award, both 2015, both for Strong Inside; Vanderbilt Student Media Hall of Fame induction, 2016; Sydney Taylor Honor Award, 2020, for Games of Deception.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
With affection for athletics and a passion for social justice, Andrew Maraniss has written several insightful investigations of groundbreaking athletes and major sporting events. He was raised in Washington, DC, where he rooted for Georgetown University’s basketball team, and also in Austin, Texas. A major influence as he started envisioning a professional career was his father, a journalist for the Washington Post. His father’s book-length works would include a biography of Roberto Clemente and a history of the 1960 Olympics.
The younger Maraniss received the Fred Russell-Grantland Rice Sportswriting scholarship to attend Vanderbilt University, where he earned a degree in American History. He thought that a gig working for Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now just the Rays) during their inaugural season was his dream job, but after a year he opted to switch gears and work for a public-relations firm in Nashville. He remained there for nearly two decades, but the sports world continued calling to him, and he ended up working in the athletic department back at Vanderbilt. There, he heads the Sports & Society initiative, which draws attention to the intersections of race, gender, and sports and champions equality and justice.
Speaking with a ReadMoreCO interviewer about the significance of sports narratives like those he has written, Maraniss remarked: “Sports remain one of the few aspects of our divided society that literally bring us together around a shared experience. … Once you have a reader’s attention, they realize there’s so much more to a good sports book than scores and statistics. Sports stories are human interest stories; they capture a moment in time in history; they offer inherent tension and drama. And within the world of sports reside all the social themes that matter: race, gender, sexuality, inequity, democracy, politics.”
It was at Vanderbilt that Maraniss became aware of the legacy of Perry Wallace, who was the first black basketball player in the NCAA’s Southeastern Conference (SEC). In setting out to devote the first full-length biography to Wallace and his achievements, Maraniss was inspired in part by his Brooklyn grandfather’s stories about the courage and impact of Jackie Robinson. After producing a scholarly investigation as his debut book-length work, Maraniss adapted his text for young readers and published it as Strong Inside: The True Story of How Perry Wallace Broke College Basketball’s Color Line.
A star at Pearl High, in Tennessee, Wallace was recruited by colleges across the country. Accepting a scholarship from Vanderbilt, Wallace enrolled in 1966 and immediately made an impact on and off the court. In the barely desegregated mid-sixties South, Wallace endured discrimination, racist verbal abuse, and even death threats, but he pressed onward with basketball and also undertook civil rights activism on behalf of fellow black students. Reviewing the original edition in Booklist, Craig Clark praised Maraniss’s elaboration of how Wallace “grows from an intellectual athlete who quietly endured, to an eloquent and determined advocate for true integration on Vanderbilt’s campus.” In School Library Journal, Abby Bussen declared of Strong Inside, “This portrait of the fortitude of a young athlete will make a huge impact on teens and is guaranteed to spark serious discussion.”
With Games of Deception: The True Story of the First U.S. Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany, Maraniss investigates the nuances of basketball players’ participation in the Munich Olympics prior to World War II. Maraniss sets the stage with an overview of the history of basketball, which was invented with physical fitness in mind—and led Hitler to hope Germany could use the game to show its mettle to the world. Some called for the U.S. to boycott the 1936 Games, but Jesse Owens would make history there, while James Naismith himself handed out medals. The U.S. team featured all white players, including one Jewish player who braved the inflammatory political climate to compete. Finding the book to be written with both “the captivating voice of a color commentator and the sobriety of a historian,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor called Games of Deception “an insightful, gripping account of basketball and bias.”
Maraniss commemorates another breakthrough athlete in Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke, focused on the first Major League Baseball player to come out as gay. Signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers at nineteen and making it to the big show in 1976, Burke invented the high-five gesture the following year. Extroverted and charming, Burke declined to clarify his sexual orientation at first, but teammates soon learned that he was leading an openly gay life off the field. Consequently, management proved homophobic and pushed him off the team. Settling in San Francisco, Burke struggled with substance abuse, indigence, incarceration, and illness; he died from complications of AIDS at the age of forty-two.
Reviewing Singled Out in Booklist, Michael Cart affirmed that Maraniss “does an extraordinary job of recording this memorable life in black-and-white photographs and fluid, compelling writing.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor hailed Singled Out as a “meticulously researched history of the ways queer culture in the ’70s intersected with baseball, Blackness, and larger culture wars.” Amanda MacGregor declared in School Library Journal, “This remarkable tribute to a trailblazer is narrative nonfiction at its finest.”
Maraniss turns to women and basketball in Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team. Four years after the 1972 passage of Title IX, requiring equal funding for men’s and women’s athletics in federally supported schools, women’s basketball premiered as a sport at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. Most of the women who joined the team had low profiles at the time, but they overcame sexism as well as racism to compete on the court and, winning silver, make a collective social statement before the world. In School Library Journal, Amanda MacGregor declared that “Maraniss, a master of narrative nonfiction, creates an immersive and emotional story” as he investigates the “seemingly insurmountable adversity” faced by the women, many of whom were black. A Kirkus Reviews writer found that in “weaving women’s basketball into a textured account of a society in flux,” Maraniss delivers a “winning story full of heart, camaraderie, and power.” In Booklist, Angela Leeper deemed Inaugural Ballers “a triumphant account for any sports fan.”
About his ongoing motivation as an author, Maraniss told Sean Kinch of Chapter 16: “My goal is to continue writing serious sports-related nonfiction, with a social justice bent. … Casting these stories within the realm of sports is an accessible way to introduce themes with larger social significance. If my books can help inspire students to read and can help them think about their place in the world in a different way, the opportunity they have to stand up against injustice rather than remaining a bystander, that’s a very gratifying thing.”
(open new)In 2024 Maraniss published the “Beyond the Game: Athletes Change the World” series with illustrator Deandra Hodge. Maya Moore centers on the titular Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) player. Moore was exceptionally talented at basketball since middle school. She went on to lead a stellar career and played for Team USA at the Olympics in both 2012 and 2016. At the height of her career, though, she retired from professional basketball in 2019 so she could help campaign for the release of innocent man Jonathan Irons, who had been sentenced to fifty years in jail. She and Irons later married. Booklist contributor Carolyn Phelan claimed that “this series’ dual purpose offers a refreshing shift of emphasis from the usual sports biographies.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor found it to be “message-driven but centered on a well-chosen example.”
Another book in the “Beyond the Game: Athletes Change the World” series, LeBron James, focuses on National Basketball Association (NBA) player LeBron James. The book starts with James’s life from his boyhood in Akron, Ohio. While he was a talented basketball player as a kid, he also had a penchant for helping others. The book also looks at the I Promise school, which helps underprivileged students gain access to a good education, in addition to books, meals, transportation, and helps with job placement after graduation. A Kirkus Reviews contributor observed that the book was “low on sports action” but “high on humanitarian values.”
In an interview in Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, Maraniss discussed how he came to choose Moore and James as the first to athletes to cover in the “Beyond the Game: Athletes Change the World” series. Maraniss noted that the “series focuses on athletes who have done important work outside of sports to help other people.” Maraniss explained that “Maya Moore was arguably the best player in women’s basketball and gave up her professional career to help free an innocent man from prison. LeBron famously refused to “shut up and dribble” and has used his platform to speak out on issues ranging from voter suppression to gun violence to Black Lives Matter. The goal is for the series to continue to be equally divided between male and female subjects.”
Maraniss also talked about the series in an interview in Slam. Addressing his targeted audience of younger elementary school-aged readers, he recalled that “one piece of advice that I’ve gotten from my editors working on these books, not only for these little kids, but also for teenagers is to respect the audience and not dumb things down. And so what I’m trying to do is just tell a story in a clearer way, which I would be trying to do whether I was writing for elementary school kids or high school kids or adults. The major difference is the length of the books.”(close new)
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2014, Craig Clark, review of Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collison of Race and Sports in the South, p. 10; September 1, 2019, Karen Cruze, review of Games of Deception: The True Story of the First U.S. Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany, p. 94; October 15, 2020, Michael Cart, review of Singled Out: The True Story of Glenn Burke, p. 41; September 1, 2022, Angela Leeper, review of Inaugural Bailers: The True Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team, p. 63; January 1, 2024, Carolyn Phelan, review of Maya Moore and LeBron James, p. 57.
BookPage, December 1, 2014, Keith Herrell, review of Strong Inside, p. 43.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2019, review of Games of Deception; February 1, 2021, review of Singled Out; August 1, 2022, review of Inaugural Ballers; May 15, 2024, review of Maya Moore and LeBron James.
School Library Journal, January 1, 2017, Abby Bussen, review of Strong Inside: The True Story of How Perry Wallace Broke College Basketball’s Color Line, p. 119; December 1, 2019, Kevin McGuire, review of Games of Deception, p. 102; July 1, 2021, Amanda MacGregor, review of Singled Out, p. 84; September 1, 2022, Amanda MacGregor, review of Inaugural Ballers, p. 126.
ONLINE
Andrew Maraniss website, http://andrewmaraniss.com (January 2, 2024).
BookPage, https://www.bookpage.com/ (December 1, 2014), Keith Herrell, “Andrew Maraniss: A Sports Pioneer.”
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, https://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/ (December 9, 2019), author interview; (March 22, 2021), author interview; (September 16, 2022), author interview; (July 31, 2024, 2022), author interview.
Burn It All Down, https://www.burnitalldownpod.com/ (September 27, 2022), Lindsay Gibbs, author interview.
Chapter 16, https://chapter16.org/ (October 30, 2019), Sean Kinch, “A Bright Shining Lie.”
Ed Odeven Reporting, https://edodevenreporting.com/ (March 12, 2018), Ed Odeven, “Andrew Maraniss Reflects on an Eight-Year Labor of Love.”
National Public Radio website, https://www.npr.org/ (June 7, 2022), Sacha Pfeiffer, “Homophobia Has Lingered in Baseball since the Days of Glenn Burke in the 1970s.”
Parnassus Musing, https://parnassusmusing.net/ (November 1, 2019), Rae Ann Parker, “Andrew Maraniss Talks about Basketball, the Olympics, and His New Book Games of Deception.”
ReadMoreCO, https://www.readmoreco.com/ (November 22, 2019), author interview; (August 31, 2022), author interview.
School Library Connection, https://schoollibraryconnection.com/ (November 1, 2019), Mark Strong, “Meet Andrew Maraniss, Author of Games of Deception.”
Slam, https://www.slamonline.com/ (March 5, 2024), author interview.
Vanderbilt Hustler, https://vanderbilthustler.com/ (March 31, 2022), Jaime Pérez, “Unsung Hero: How Andrew Maraniss Is Impacting Vanderbilt Athletics.”
Vanderbilt University Athletics website, https://vucommodores.com/ (January 2, 2025), author profile.
About the Books and the Author
About the Author
Andrew Maraniss
Andrew Maraniss is a New York Times-bestselling author of narrative nonfiction for teens and adults, focusing on the intersection of sports and social justice.
His first book, STRONG INSIDE, was the recipient of the 2015 Lillian Smith Book Award and the lone Special Recognition honor at the 2015 RFK Book Awards. The Young Reader edition was named one of the Top 10 Biographies and Top 10 Sports Books of 2017 by the American Library Association and was selected as a Notable Social Studies Book for 2019 by the National Council for the Social Studies.
His second book, GAMES OF DECEPTION, is the story of the first U.S. Olympic basketball team, which competed at the 1936 Summer Games in Nazi Germany. It received the 2020 Sydney Taylor Honor Award and was named one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2019. Both the National Council for the Social Studies and the American Library Association honored it as a Notable Book of 2019.
His third book, SINGLED OUT, is a biography of Glenn Burke, the first openly gay Major League Baseball player. Esquire magazine named SINGLED OUT one of the “Top 100 Baseball Books Ever Written,” and the American Library Association named it to the 2022 Rainbow Book List. The Young Adult Library Services Association named the audio book version of SINGLED OUT one of the Top 10 audio books of the year for 2021.
His fourth book, INAUGURAL BALLERS: The True Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympic basketball team. It was named to the American Library Association’s RISE Feminist Book List and was named a 2023 Book of the Year by School Library Journal and Booklist. The book was also instrumental in the entire 1976 women’s Olympic basketball team being inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023.
Andrew has also launched a series of early chapter books for young readers. Illustrated by DeAndra Hodge, the BEYOND THE GAME: Athletes Change the World series highlights athletes who have done meaningful work outside of sports to help other people. The first two books in the series launched on March 5, 2024 and are on NBA star LeBron James and WNBA star Maya Moore. The third book in the series focuses on NFL star Pat Tillman – an NFL player who left his career with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after 9/11, and was ultimately killed by friendly fire.
Andrew is director of special projects at the Vanderbilt University Athletic Department. He has appeared on several national media programs, including NPR’s All Things Considered and Only A Game, NBC’s Meet The Press, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, ESPN’s Keith Olbermann Show, ESPN Radio’s The Sporting Life, and the SEC Network’s Paul Finebaum Show.
Andrew was born in Madison, Wis., grew up in Washington, D.C. and Austin, Texas and now lives in Brentwood, Tenn., with his wife Alison, and their two children. Follow Andrew on Twitter @trublu24 and visit his website at andrewmaraniss.com.
Andrew Maraniss
Special Projects Coordinator (Office of the Athletic Director)
phone
615.322.4121
Email
andrew.j.maraniss@vanderbilt.edu
New York Times bestselling author Andrew Maraniss returned to his alma mater as Vanderbilt Athletics’ special projects coordinator in 2017 after spending nearly two decades at a large Nashville public relations firm.
As special projects coordinator, Maraniss oversees the Vanderbilt Sports & Society Initiative and assists with writing, research, campus and community projects.
A 1992 graduate, Maraniss attended Vanderbilt on the Fred Russell-Grantland Rice Sportswriting scholarship. He served as Vanderbilt’s media relations director for men’s basketball from 1992-97 before joining the Tampa Bay Devil Rays as media relations manager during the team’s inaugural season in 1998. He returned to Nashville the following year to join McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations, where he later became a partner of the firm.
In 2014, Maraniss published “Strong Inside,” a biography of Vanderbilt’s Perry Wallace, the first African American basketball player in the SEC. The book earned the Lillian Smith Book Award for civil rights and RFK Book Awards’ Special Recognition Prize for social justice, becoming the first sports-related book to win either honor. “Strong Inside” was selected as the common read for incoming Vanderbilt freshmen in both 2016 and 2017. A Young Readers adaptation was named one of the Top 10 Biographies for Youth by the American Library Association.
Maraniss’ second book, “Games of Deception,” is the true story of the first United States Olympic basketball team at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. It was named one of Amazon’s Top Books of 2019. His most recent book, “Singled Out,” is a biography of Glenn Burke, the first openly gay Major League Baseball player and inventor of the high-five.
Maraniss is a 2016 graduate of Leadership Nashville and was inducted into the Vanderbilt Student Media Hall of Fame that year. He is a contributor to ESPN’s sports and race website, TheUndefeated.com.
Andrew and his wife, Alison, have two young children and live in Brentwood.
March 5, 2024
From LeBron James to Maya Moore, Author Andrew Maraniss Latest Work is for Every Generation of Hoops Fans
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The game has long been a sport engrained with history, ankle-breaking pioneers and moments that have endured the test of time. From Michael Jordan’s infamous last shot to the thrill of the 2016 NBA Finals and the iconic 3-1 comeback, these will forever be etched in basketball lore.
But there are also other stories that need to be told. From Perry Wallace, who was the first Black basketball player to compete in the SEC to the social justice work led by WNBA players and protests that took place across the W and the NBA in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, author Andrew Maraniss is here to tell them all.
Maraniss, a New York Times bestselling author and a Visiting Author at Vanderbilt University Athletics, is a pioneer in his own right. He’s just released four books, including a new 10th-anniversary edition of Strong Inside (for adults), the paperback edition of Inaugural Ballers (for teens/adults) and the first two books in a new series for first and third graders called Beyond the Game. Get your copy here.
SLAM recently caught up Maraniss to discuss the inspiration behind his work and writing books for the next generation of sports fans:
SLAM: Let’s start with the first book you published. What inspired you to write Strong Inside?
ANDREW MARANISS: Growing up like you I was really into sports writing. I always saw sports and reading and writing as connected. My parents said I learned how to read by reading the back of baseball cards when I was a little kid.
In my sophomore year, I was taking a Black history course I was a history major. And it just coincidentally happened to be the same year that Perry Wallace was invited back to Vanderbilt to be honored as the Jackie Robinson figure of the SEC.
[It was] just a coincidence that he comes back at the same time I’m taking this course and there’s an article in a student magazine about his experience as the first black player in the league. Not growing up [in Tennessee], I had never heard Perry’s story before. And so it immediately grabbed me as something that I was interested in…so I called Perry out of the blue. He was a professor in Baltimore at that time, and I wrote a paper about him when I was 19 years old…And 17 years later, I emailed him and said, Hey, do you remember me wrote a paper about you and time ago? I’d like to write a biography about you.
SLAM: Your two books from your new series Beyond the Game are written for first and third graders. In which ways was your approach to writing a book for younger audiences different?
AM: One piece of advice that I’ve gotten from my editors working on these books, not only for these little kids, but also for teenagers is to respect the audience and not dumb things down. And so what I’m trying to do is just tell a story in a clearer way, which I would be trying to do whether I was writing for elementary school kids or high school kids or adults…The major difference is the length of the books…[And] on the back, they have a glossary of terms that they might be unfamiliar with. They have sort of a call to action, like what have you learned from reading the story that could guide the kids and their families as they read the book.
The reason why I wrote [Beyond the Game] is that these issues are things that matter to families that a lot of families are actually experiencing…Maya Moore and LeBron James are fighting for the same values that these families have, and that they would like their kids to read about, at a time when there’s a lot of pressure on libraries and school districts and teachers from others in the community…And so I understand that these books are coming out at a time when they could be seen as controversial by some people.
But for me, that’s all the more reason to write them.
SLAM: This is a lot like making you choose a favorite child, but which of your four books is your favorite and why?
AM: Yeah, that is exactly like asking for your favorite child is. And I’ve used that analogy before. With that caveat, I would say that Strong Inside being my first book, with it being the book that took me eight years of my life to write, and also because of the relationship that I was able to form with Perry Wallace himself while he was alive, will always be the most special book to me.
And even while I was working on it, he was becoming a real father figure, mentor, favorite professor, type of figure to me. And I feel so fortunate that I was able to spend so much time around him and to learn so much from him about life and racism and courage and toll of pioneering. I saw him on his deathbed, you know, and he asked if we could plan the memorial service for him here at Vanderbilt.
SLAM: Even compared to other major sports, basketball has been a big player in advocating social equality. What makes basketball special as a platform to discuss societal injustice and promote equality amongst different genders and races?
AM: That’s a really interesting question. I think the answer goes back to the very beginnings of basketball. In Inaugural Ballers, I write that [basketball] was an international game…The first players were students from around the world, we actually have a sketch of the very first basketball game ever played. That was done by a Japanese student at that school. So from the very beginning, it was international, right, which I think is unusual in sports…Because there are only five players on the court, they’re not wearing helmets, it’s a very personal game and the players are visible. In that way, it gives them a platform that’s a little bit different than football even in visual ways.
Basketball has been a place where women and African Americans and other groups that are marginalized often have found success. Today’s game has enormous platforms…so with that comes an opportunity to use that platform to speak out for civil rights or human rights, women’s rights. And it’s been really impressive, I would say, to see how these basketball players are using that platform to try to make the world a better place for all people, not just for themselves.
SLAM: Now that your four books will be coming out in a couple of days, what’s next for you?
AM: Oh, well, the Beyond the Game series continues beyond these first two books that will come out on March 5. So the third book will be on Pat Tillman. You know, the NFL player who enlisted after 9/11 was killed by his fellow troops from friendly fire. And then the army lied about the circumstances of his death. So again, you could call that a heavy topic for first, second and third graders, but it’s a really interesting story.
The fourth book, I’m just beginning now will be about a Native American distance runner named Jordan Marie Daniel, who raises awareness of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. That’s her advocacy through her sport. So yeah, that would be the other things for people to know.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Q&A with Andrew Maraniss
Andrew Maraniss is the author of the new children's Beyond the Game biography series, which began with books about basketball stars LeBron James and Maya Moore. Maraniss's other books include Inaugural Ballers. He is director of special projects at the Vanderbilt University Athletic Department, and he lives in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Q: Why did you decide to focus on basketball stars LeBron James and Maya Moore in your new books?
A: The Beyond the Game series focuses on athletes who have done important work outside of sports to help other people. The books on Moore and James are the first two books in a continuing series, and I wanted to get the series off on a strong foot by writing about athletes who are well known and clearly illustrate the concept.
Maya Moore was arguably the best player in women’s basketball and gave up her professional career to help free an innocent man from prison. LeBron famously refused to “shut up and dribble” and has used his platform to speak out on issues ranging from voter suppression to gun violence to Black Lives Matter.
The goal is for the series to continue to be equally divided between male and female subjects, to feature current athletes rather than retired or deceased heroes, and to highlight a diverse range of subjects.
Q: How did you research the books, and what did you learn about these athletes that especially surprised you?
A: Since these books are meant for first- to third-graders, there wasn’t quite as much research involved as there has been for my longer books for older readers. For example, I spent four years doing the research for my first book, Strong Inside.
With these first two books in the Beyond the Game series, I read books and articles about the subjects, watched documentaries and other video clips, and talked to people who know LeBron and Maya.
In the case of LeBron, I’ve always been surprised that he has to deal with so many haters. He’s lived his life in public since he was a teenager and consistently makes good decisions. He’s a good teammate, a winner, community minded. I don’t get the hate, other than people like to bring down the same people they’ve built up.
With Maya, like a lot of people, I was surprised when she married Jonathan Irons, the man she was working to free from prison. I was in the middle of writing the book when they made the announcement.
Q: What do you think DeAndra Hodge’s illustrations add to the books?
A: This was my first time writing an illustrated biography, and I am so pleased to partner with a talented illustrator like DeAndra Hodge on this series.
When writing for kids who are just beginning to read chapter books on their own, the illustrations are incredibly important. They help to make the book accessible to a wider range of young readers and they help tell the story in a fun way. The illustrations add depth and context not only to the athletic lives of the subjects, but also their social justice work.
It’s been a lot of fun for me to visit classrooms and share DeAndra’s illustrations while I’m reading the books to students.
Q: What do you hope kids take away from learning about the lives of these athletes?
A: There are several things I hope they take away from these books.
At one basic level, I just hope they enjoy reading them and find the stories and illustrations interesting and entertaining. It is so important to get kids hooked on reading at an early age.
In terms of the social messages, I hope these books spark family conversations about the serious social issues at the heart of the books – racism, voter suppression, police violence, two systems of justice, the political choice to allow kids to grow up in poverty, and mass incarceration, among others.
I hope that kids will see there are different reasons to admire athletes. Sometimes we admire them purely for their athletic achievements, and that’s fine. But the transcendent athletes represent something more, and that’s what this series is all about.
Finally, I hope these books help kids develop a sense of empathy and a desire to use their own voice to speak up for justice. Kids have a strong sense of what is right and wrong and it’s important for them to see examples of adults who are committed to justice when so many people in our society seem to be celebrated and rewarded for taking the exact opposite positions.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m continuing the Beyond the Game series with illustrated biographies of Pat Tillman, the NFL star who enlisted in the army after Sept. 11 and was tragically killed by his own men (coming Oct. 1, 2024) and of Indigenous runner Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Whetstone, who raises awareness of the issue of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls (coming in 2025).
I’ve also begun writing my first fiction series for Scholastic about a group of diverse neighborhood kids who learn lessons by trying out different sports.
And I’m writing a book for teens and adults on the first Special Olympics, which took place in 1968 in Chicago.
This is on top of my job as director of special projects at the Vanderbilt University Athletic Department, where I manage the Sports & Society Initiative. I’m staying busy and I enjoy all of it.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I have testified on behalf of teachers and school librarians at the Tennessee legislature as they have been attacked by Moms for Liberty and conservative legislators.
Earlier this summer I had the opportunity to participate in the Children’s Defense Fund’s Read Aloud program commemorating the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer 1964. The focus was on banned books and protecting the freedom to read and learn. I know many other authors and illustrators who are active on these issues all over the country.
I would encourage your readers to speak up in their communities and to support authors writing the kinds of truthful, important books that are under fire. That could mean buying books for schools or community programs, inviting authors to speak, speaking up at school board meetings, voting for the right candidates, running for office.
Now’s not the time to just sit back and take comfort in believing the right things. The subjects of these books may have large platforms due to their position as athletes, but the point of the books is to inspire everybody to act in their own way.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Andrew Maraniss.
Maraniss, Andrew BEYOND THE GAME Viking (Children's None) $16.99 3, 5 ISBN: 9780593526156
A portrait of the "best basketball player on the planet," focusing particularly on his off-the-court I PROMISE initiative.
Maraniss covers LeBron James' life from a young boy to a b-ball titan but positions his subject here as "just a kid from Akron who wanted to help other people." So though he recaps LeBron's professional career (so far) in broad outline, he directs at least as much attention to his work with his hometown's low-income families, his public protests in the wake of the killings of Trayvon Martin and other Black victims, and his defiant response to the Fox News commentator who told him to just "shut up and dribble": "I AM MORE THAN AN ATHLETE." Maraniss also covers the I PROMISE school, which offers meals, bikes, college scholarships, and more to students and even housing and job training for their families. In line with the series theme, backmatter contains both career stats (up to the end of 2023) and challenges to readers to stand up, speak up, and look for ways to give struggling fellow students an assist. "In a world with so much injustice, how will you help others?" Even as a child, LeBron is a charismatic figure in Hodge's monochrome illustrations.
Low on sports action; high on humanitarian values. (timeline, glossary) (Biography. 8-10)
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"Maraniss, Andrew: BEYOND THE GAME." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A793536967/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=82da9e85. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.
Maraniss, Andrew BEYOND THE GAME Viking (Children's None) $16.99 3, 5 ISBN: 9780593526187
A profile of a WNBA star who gave up her professional career to focus on a humanitarian cause.
Maya Moore was a bona fide star--a noisy kid with "awesome stats" even as a middle schooler, who led her high school team to a 125-3 record and went on to spectacular exploits in both the WNBA and the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. But Maraniss commends her particularly here for suddenly retiring in 2019 to campaign for the release of Jonathan Irons, a Black man who at age 18 was unjustly convicted by an all-white jury of burglary and assault and sentenced to 50 years in prison. The two were later married. The author ends there but goes on to provide discussion questions and to urge readers to think and learn more about racial injustice. "Anyone can make a difference," he closes. "And everyone should try." Along the way, he points out the sexism that Moore observed; NBA games get far more exposure than WNBA games--a disparity that frustrated her ("The ball of momentum is deflating before my eyes"). In stiff but sincere monochrome illustrations, Hodge tracks Moore from a child to a sturdy, confident adult; aside from one image of a white basketball coach with a clownish face, figures in the illustrations are expressive and dark-skinned.
Message-driven but centered on a well-chosen example. (career stats, glossary, resource list) (Biography. 8-10)
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"Maraniss, Andrew: BEYOND THE GAME." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A793536968/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a69c2d35. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.
LeBron James. By Andrew Maraniss. Illus. by DeAndra Hodge. Mar. 2024. 96p. $16.99 (9780593526156); paper, $6.99 (9780593526163). 796.323092.
Maya Moore. By Andrew Maraniss. Illus. by DeAndra Hodge. Mar. 2024. 96p. $16.99 (9780593526187); paper, $6.99 (9780593526194). 796.323092.
The Beyond the Game: Athletes Change the World series opens with two early chapter books featuring pro-basketball stars, LeBron James of the NBA and former WNBA player Maya Moore. Each volume offers a very readable biography focused on the athlete's childhood, schooling, and basketball career, followed by an account of his or her decision to change the world in a meaningful way. As young children, both James and Moore were raised in poverty by caring, single mothers. As adults, they are trying to change society for the better. LeBron James reveals how James has created programs to help ensure that children in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, have access to food, housing, and education, while their parents can receive training for employment. Maya Moore describes how after meeting a young man who was wrongfully convicted of a crime and incarcerated, Moore retired from the WNBA to work for criminal and social justice, especially to address racial prejudice in these areas. With wide-spaced lines of text and attractive, digital illustrations in black and white, the books in this series will appeal to young readers with an interest in basketball and how some of its brightest stars are using their wealth and influence to improve the lives of others. This series' dual purpose offers a refreshing shift of emphasis from the usual sports biographies.--Carolyn Phelan
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
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Phelan, Carolyn. "Beyond the Game: Athletes Change the World Series. Viking. Gr. 2-4. (2 titles)." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 9-10, 1 Jan. 2024, pp. 57+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A780973498/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a3391bae. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.