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Basketball: It’s about getting a ball through the net and scoring points, yes. But it’s also about discipline, teamwork, fun, fitness and more. Love of the game — and the lifelong lessons it can teach — led author Mickey Lai and illustrator Natalie Woo to collaborate on their new picture book, “The ABC’s of Basketball.”
The children’s book takes readers on an alphabetical journey through the world of basketball, from “Assist” all the way to “Zone Defense,” each lettered entry coming with a brief explanation in poetic form. The goal is not only to help reinforce basketball skills and vocabulary but also impart lessons on “building character, how to have the right attitude, how to approach the game mentally, and — not just basketball, also off the court — just how to be a good person,” Lai said.
Lai is a special education teacher at Mountain View High School and he’s also a longtime basketball coach, offering group lessons, with experience coaching at local schools as well. Basketball has always been a big part of his life and family. He grew up in Sunnyvale with a dad who had played professionally in Vietnam. The book is another way to share the game that he loves so much.
“Basketball is not just great for us health-wise, but it’s great for us socially. We get to meet just any random person on any given night when you go play basketball. You learn so much about people just from playing basketball, more so than you do sometimes from conversation, you know?” Lai said. “It’s just done so much for me personally, that it just felt right, kind of putting it all into this project.”
Woo is a Mountain View artist who works at Google by day, and whose artwork has been featured by the United States Digital Service (a White House startup) and Google, among other organizations. She, too, grew up playing basketball. In fact, Lai’s uncle was her coach in high school.
“What it taught me was this idea of discipline, this idea of being able to accomplish something that you can do, not only individually, but together as a team with seemingly folks that are completely different from you …” she said. “And I think that level of camaraderie, that level of work ethic, has come over to every part of my life, and I think that is part of this, the story of this book. And what I really appreciate about Mickey is that when you see him coach, it’s all of that.”
Lai has been giving basketball lessons to Woo’s son for several years now, and she’s admired the way he teaches the game, instilling good sportsmanship and healthy attitudes in addition to athletic fundamentals. She got to know Lai through her son’s weekly lessons and, after learning she illustrated a book for San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral (“Cathedral Cat,” written by Ellen Clark-King), he invited her to collaborate with him on his book idea.
“I had never illustrated a book like this before, and also Mickey has a very interesting perspective in that he is a basketball coach. And so, a lot of the illustrations are from that eye of playing the game,” she said. “It was a really, really fun experience going back and forth and learning together.”
It was important to both Lai and Woo to show diversity in the book characters, showing that all kinds of people enjoy playing basketball, including a range of ages from little tykes to adults. Both Lai and Woo’s own children were delighted to see illustrations based on them turn up in the book’s pages. It also reflects the author and illustrator’s own experiences growing up as Asian American basketball enthusiasts, which is also part of what attracted Woo to the collaboration in the first place.
“Often, Asian Americans are stereotyped as just being quiet or only focused on school. The book attempts to challenge that idea. By putting Asian American kids front and center in a basketball book, it shows that our kids are athletes and sports fans, too,” Woo wrote in an email to this news organization, noting that by depicting diversity in a book designed for youngsters helps kids feel seen from an early age and learn that diversity is a part of everyday life.
“It makes a big difference when a story is created by people who actually share that background,” she said. “Because both Mickey and I are Asian American, the culture and joy in the illustrations come directly from our own lives and our real love for the game. We’ve trained in each basketball technique represented in the book.”
Woo usually works with watercolor paint on paper but for “The ABC’s of Basketball,” Lai envisioned a colorful, Disney-style, digital cartoon look. So, she took on the challenge of working with new tools – Procreate, a digital painting and illustration program. In addition to working together on character development and representation, the team made storyboards using pencil sketches before moving on to coloring.
One of Lai’s personal favorite entries in the book is “U,” represented by “Uh-Oh,” which shows a player making a mistake and concludes, “Uh-Oh’s will happen/And that is okay/Learn and try your best/On the next play.”
For both Lai and Woo, it is those extra lessons, beyond the actual rules and vocabulary about the game, that can mean the most.
“You’re gonna learn the fundamentals somehow. You’re gonna either learn from watching it or you’re gonna learn it from coaches, but sometimes you don’t always get that character development that you need, and being okay with making a mistake, and learning how you treat other people kind of comes around to you,” Lai said. “Just all those little pieces that we put into the book … having that positive attitude, and that it’s okay to make mistakes, to grow as a person, that, above everything, was what I want kids to get out of it.”
Woo is partial to “F” for “Foul,” which she said shows an experience she and her son had playing together. The “W” entry in the book is “Water,” in regards to the importance of hydration for health. Some have asked, “Why not winning? Why not win?” Woo recalled. “I think we focus too much on winning sometimes. And part of the game is learning to lose, learning to fail, learning to develop a skill, and then putting it all together. How do you build your own skills and then work with a team?”
The book will likely be available in late November or December, including via Amazon, Lai said. There’s currently a waitlist open where folks can sign up to receive updates and get more info about its release and how to get copies.
They hope to celebrate the book’s publication with some local events, perhaps at a basketball gym. In fact, Lai would love to bring it on visits to elementary school PE classes and sports camps so children can actually be actively working on basketball skills in conjunction with the book.
“I envision, as I’m reading the book, the kids have got basketball in their hands. We’re doing the drills, we’re doing the fundamentals, which can be kind of hard in a library setting,” he said.
More information on the book is available at nataliewoo.com/abcwaitlist. More information on the author is available at coachedbymickey.com and the artist at.nataliewoo.com.
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