The Moves Make the Man

The Moves Make The Man is a sports novel written by award-winning author Bruce Brooks that deals with many issues in society including racism, domestic violence, abuse, and family deaths. It was chosen best book of 1984 by School Library Journal (SLJ), ALA Notable Children's Book, notable book of the year New York Times, and won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and a Newbery Honor in 1985.

Setting

The book is set in North Carolina around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, in 1961. It is written in first person and narrated by an African-American child named Jerome Foxworthy, who goes by the nickname of Jayfox. He is the only African American in his school, being forced to integrate. He covers the stories leading up to the relationship between him and a young white boy named Braxton Rivers III, otherwise known as Bix: about when he first saw him playing baseball, Bix's freaking out in Home Ec class, and teaching him basketball on a court in the woods at night. Braxton is a child who never says anything that is not a truth, which brings him problems others cannot understand, and eventually he runs away. The book covers problems happening in both his and Jerome's families. This book was published by Harper & Row.

Characters

Jerome Foxworthy The main character, and narrator of the story. Jerome is young, African American, and loves to play basketball. He is being raised by a single mother who first meets Braxton Rivers in a Home Economics class he is forced to take after it is discovered his mom has been injured and Jerome needs to learn to take care of his younger siblings.

Bix Braxton Rivers,The 'Friend' of Jerome. Bix could only tell the truth for most of the story, but he begins to play tricks after he finds how the truth hurt his mother and those around him. Bix loved baseball, but practiced basketball with Jerome and played a game of one-on-one against his stepfather (a former college basketball player) in order to win the right to see his mother in the mental hospital.