An Interview With Kobe Bryant of The Wizenard Series: From NBA Superstar to Author

The Wizenard Series: Training Camp is the first volume of a new fantasy series created byKobe Bryant and written by Wesley King. Welcome to two weeks of supernatural basketball training camp! There’s lots of basketball and magic, as well as lessons in self-respect and perseverance. When I got my copy for The Training Camp, my first thought was, “What a lovely book.” It has a red felt cover and ribbon bookmark. Bryant’s fans are definitely excited about his transition off the court to storyteller. I got the chance to chat with Bryant just after he announced that he and his wife were going to bring a fourth daughter into the world. Huge congrats!

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It was an amazing collaboration and yes, this was the first of many projects together. I’ve read Wesley’s books and was a fan of his writing. For Training Camp, he was able to take my outline of the characters and the plot and bring it to life on the page. Our biggest hurdle was writing the first chapter. If you read the first chapter of Rain, it took us two months to knock that down. You can say “I have these characters. This is what they stand for. This is who they are.” But once you go into writing dialogue, you really have to be able to say this is what the character would say, this is something they wouldn’t say. This is the inflection they would use. We really went back and forth on that first chapter but once we nailed that, it was the foundation for everything else.

How did you come up with the idea for this series?

Sports/fantasy is a blend of two of my passions: sports and fantasy storytelling. I’m a voracious reader and huge Harry Potter fan. So, it was a natural fit for me from that perspective. And, I think kids respond to lessons they learn while being entertained. It connects back to my desire to want to bring joy back to youth sports, while teaching important life lessons. Fantasy and magic draw people in—especially kids.  And in sports, the magic is inherently there—good and bad. If I’m feeling great, if I feel like: I can’t miss! That basket looks massive! But then conversely, if I’m feeling bad, the basket looks like it’s the size of a keyhole. I can’t make anything. That’s emotional magic. So I wanted to take emotion and use that as magic in our world to teach these very complicated methods to our children in an entertaining way.

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Harry Potter Books 1-7 Special Edition Boxed Set

By J. K. Rowling
Illustrator Brian Selznick , Mary GrandPré

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Why did you and Wesley decide to write The Training Camp from five different perspectives?

Why did you and Wesley decide to write The Training Camp from five different perspectives?

To me, it was the most authentic way of crafting a book about a team.  You can’t really grow as a team unless you understand or see the growth of the teammates you have around you. In book one, what you see is a lot of inner perspective, a lot of self-awareness, and self-acceptance. Now we’ll start seeing the growth of them having the courage to voice what that inner journey was for them to others. That’s the progression: First you have inner acceptance, and then you can share your journey with others. And now you can support and rally around each other. It’s important to see those different perspectives.

How did facing your own fears as an athlete play into developing this series?

It was critical to developing the series as there’s a piece of me and my experiences within each one of the characters. For example, Rain’s weaknesses on the court are the same as mine. There’s a vulnerability within him, an unwillingness to trust somebody else before he trusts himself.  That’s something that I dealt with, so I definitely drew from that when creating him and his story.

Have the girls on your daughter’s middle school basketball team read Training Camp? What’s the feedback you’ve heard from them?

Yes! They’ve read it and they absolutely love it.  Their first reaction was to the overall look of the book. They think it’s beautiful! The look and feel are so different from many other books out there for kids, so they responded really positively to that. As for the story itself, they enjoyed the format, which gives a window into the perspectives of the five main characters.

As a kid, were you a big reader? Can you tell us some of your favorite books from when you were young?

I’m a voracious reader now, but as a kid I was not a big reader—at all. You could not get me to sit down and read a book from start to finish because you couldn’t get me the sit still in the first place! Back then, there weren’t many books that were centered around things that I was genuinely interested in.  If there had been a book that centered around basketball, fantasy and magic, I would’ve sat down and read that book in one sitting. That’s why I wanted to create this new kind of industry for readers who are generally reluctant readers or ones who can’t sit still. This is the series for them.

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Mary Poppins [50th Anniversary Edition] [Includes Digital Copy]

Cast Julie Andrews , Dick Van Dyke , Glynis Johns , David Tomlinson , Ed Wynn
Director Robert Stevenson

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Who was the inspiration behind the character Rolabi Wizenard?

Who was the inspiration behind the character Rolabi Wizenard?

The original inspiration for Rolabi was Julie Andrews’ portrayal of Mary Poppins, a favorite movie of mine. She comes into the scene, you have no idea where she came from. She’s stern but also provides guidance and won’t give you specific answers on things. So, Mary Poppins was the start of the character and then I drew upon the transformative teaching of my basketball muses in order to place the character in a basketball setting. There’s a lot of my coaches Phil Jackson and Tex Winter, as well as the great John Wooden, represented in Rolabi.

What’s coming out next with Granity Studios? (Legacy and the Queen on September 3rd?)

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Lastly, what are you working on right now? You mentioned that you might be producing The Wizenard Series for Broadway?

We are going to release three to four middle grade or young adult books per year out of Granity Studios.  We plan to take those stories and develop them into shows, film and even to live theater.  We’re going to be busy.

The Wizenard Series: Training Camp is on B&N bookshelves now!