Review of Chris Paul's Children's Book "Long Shot"

As someone with a background in Children's Lit & a huge NBA basketball fan, I feel like I have a unique perspective on this topic in particular. As a result of this I decided to put together a review of CP3's book Basketball Only Funnier style.

Long Shot by Chris Paul (& someone else, Maybe someone  drew the pictures too, but mostly CP3)

(Grades 1-4, and apparently one 28 year old) From the beginning, I had questions about this book. It starts off with Michael Jordan? (Isn’t this CP3’s book?) As MJ gets double teamed, he sees lightning fast eight year old Chris Paul (there he is!) driving to the lane and shooting a jumper, even though the illustration clearly shows him going up for a dunk. This is a common boy’s fantasy, which is good since it draws in some reluctant readers. However, everyone knows that CP3 would have flopped and whipped his head back in the air like he had been shot. At LEAST, he would have given them a one way trip to Bangkok to get some more space to shoot the jumper.

The plot of the book is centered around Chris Paul’s diminutive height and how he overcame the obstacle (Which explains Paul’s firey attitude, since he seems to have a bit of Napoleon Complex. We see you overcompensating Chris Paul.). However, this book’s plot seems similar to the story “Salt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream” which I would recommend over this book all day. Even CP3’s brother, CJ, tells him he is smaller than a basketball. Nice zing CJ, but Jimmy Kimmel has you beat. Too bad Chris didn’t know the “Blake face” then. After some support from his family (they’re close, but not that close), he trains harder to get ready to make the team. SPOILER ALERT! When Chris does finally make the team, they congratulate him and Chris’ dad puts his hand on the back of Chris’ head (so that’s what Pau was doing, he just wanted to be CP3's dad).

The book is choppily written and the tone neither serves as a good read-a-loud or individual read. I particularly do not like the illustrations, which are done in acrylic paint. They remind me of an underfunded, crappy cartoon on PBS that is overly sentimental (though I do appreciate the illustrator having lines shaved into the side of the black character’s hair, which was stylin’ back in the day). Additionally, the proportions are odd in this book, especially the enormous sized hands on many of the characters (which are really creepy). The book doesn’t really stand out as the illustrations and story has been better executed before making this story seem trite even for a children’s book.

 Funny, it’s not like he wasn’t going to grow to be six feet at least, which is still tall enough to make the NBA (Hasn’t he ever heard of puberty?). That first team he made must have really made him the player he was today. It wouldn’t have been all bad if he didn’t make the cut though, since he still had a chance to become a professional athlete (boxing or bowling).
Leave some feedback & let me know if you want to see more of these or have a particular NBA player's book you'd like to see reviewed.