Fic­tion

The Bas­ket­ball Game: A Graph­ic Novel

  • From the Publisher
September 1, 2021

Heal­ing wounds and chang­ing world­views, all though a sim­ple game of basketball.

Nine-year-old Hart is attend­ing Jew­ish sum­mer camp for the first time. As if that isn’t awk­ward enough, this sum­mer the camp is going to play host to some very par­tic­u­lar vis­i­tors, though the kids at camp don’t know that yet.

What every­one else knows is that in a near­by small town called Eckville, a teacher by the name of Jim Keegstra was fired for spread­ing anti­se­mit­ic views in his class­room, where he told his stu­dents that the Holo­caust was a hoax. To make mat­ters worse, he’s also the near­by town’s may­or. To help com­bat Keegstra’s lies the Eckville and Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties decide that the best path for­ward is to invite the stu­dents taught by Keegstra to the sum­mer camp for a day of fun and fel­low­ship. What tran­spires in this graph­ic mem­oir by film­mak­er Hart Snider is a bas­ket­ball game for all time.

Adapt­ed from the Nation­al Board of Canada’s (NFB) short ani­ma­tion of the same name, The Bas­ket­ball Game is a poignant tale of the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ty as a means to rise above hatred and big­otry. In the end, as is rec­og­nized by the kids play­ing the bas­ket­ball game, we’re all in this together.

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