We Are Big Time
by Hena Khan; illus. by Safiya Zerrougui
Middle School, High School    Knopf    240 pp.
8/24    9780593430484    $21.99
Library ed.  9780593899052    $24.99
Paper ed.  9780593430477    $13.99
e-book ed.  9780593430491    $8.99

Like Tavares’s Hoops (rev. 3/23), this inspiring graphic novel is based on a real-life girls’ basketball team—here, on the all-Muslim, all-hijab-wearing Salam School’s 2018–2019 varsity team. Ninth grader Aliya has just moved from Tampa to Milwaukee and is finding the transition to a new city, climate, and much-larger school challenging. She joins Peace Academy’s basketball team despite its reputation as being “pretty bad.” With nuance, humor, and depth, Khan conveys Aliya’s experiences as the team at first falters and then begins to win under the leadership of new coach Jessica Martinez. Coach Jess teaches the girls skills and teamwork, and the girls educate their (very respectful) coach about Islamic culture. It’s not all rosy for Aliya: her co-captain is initially reluctant to share the spotlight; her grades suffer; and she focuses too much on her mistakes. At tournament time, the team is unfairly seeded last and must play the top team, but despite losing that game, they celebrate how far they’ve come. The team’s story has attracted much media coverage, and the book ends with a proud Coach Jess stating on a Bleacher Report–like TV segment that the girls “shifted the conversation and what people think an all-Muslim team can be.” Zerrougui’s visual storytelling is highly readable and makes excellent use of varied panel sizes and placements to convey character, setting, and b-ball action alike.

From the ">November/December 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.