Soccer Queens

The Coretta Scott King Award–winning creator of Hoop Kings celebrates the skill and talent of top female soccer professionals—and pays homage to the legendary US World Cup team of 1999.

Soccer, fútbol, call it what you will—the sport commands worldwide attention, and Charles R. Smith Jr. pays tribute to the sport’s greatest US athletes in poems that hum with energy and life. Whether the subject is an escape artist like Rose Lavelle, a rocket like Megan Rapinoe, or the exploits of the legendary ’99ers, who kicked their names into history, this celebration of the finesse and ferocity of players from the Women's National Soccer League excels with dynamic rhyme and bold, graphic photo-illustration. Featuring current and past stars as well as emerging players—in cleats that “churn and burn and fly”—the twelve poems in this rapid-fire collection will inspire young poets and sports fans alike to find their game and be their best.

Charles R. Smith Jr. is the author of Hoop Queens and its companions, Hoop Kings and Hoop Kings 2: New Royalty, as well as Pick-Up Game, Chameleon, and the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammed Ali. He is also the recipient of a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for his photographs accompanying the Langston Hughes poem “My People.” Charles R. Smith Jr. lives in New York.