Lunch Money Can't Shoot

When the urban neighborhood where William Lunch Money Barnes lives becomes too rough, his mother moves his family in the middle of the school year to an all-white suburb 50 miles away. The good-natured Barnes runs into one problem: everyone, including the middle school’s basketball coach, assumes that since he is African American and from the inner city, he must be great at basketball and can save the school team’s season. Unfortunately, Barnes is not an athlete, and contrary to assumptions about black kids, he’s terrible at basketball! Trouble arises when the school discovers that Lunch Money Can’t Shoot!

Twice a New York Times Bestselling Author, Michael Levin has written credibly and effectively about race on numerous occasions, including the national bestseller Dropping the Ball with Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield, No Ordinary Love with NBA star Doug and Jackie Christie, Banking On Our Future with civil rights leader and ambassador to the U.N. John Hope Bryant, and most recently for Politico.com—Shoveling While Black, a story about former baseball star and ESPN commentator Doug Glanville. Michael is also married to a woman born in mainland China and is raising four mixed-race children, including 12-year-old twins who have been a sounding board throughout the creation of the Lunch Money series.

Jack J. Pannell, Jr. is the founder and organizer of the Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys, an urban, college prep charter school. Mr. Pannell is the President of the Five Smooth Stones Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization he founded with a mission to transform a generation of urban boys with world-class educational opportunities. In developing Baltimore Collegiate as a charter school project, Mr. Pannell visited and studied over thirty high performing schools in the county and also spent a year of teaching at St. Ignatius, a Jesuit middle school for boys in Baltimore, and at Collington Square Elementary School, one of the lowest performing schools in Maryland. Mr. Pannell is the former Executive Director of the Baltimore Curriculum Project, a charter school management organization that operates four charter schools in East Baltimore. With over fifteen years of non-profit and government leadership experience, he has held senior management positions with Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, Sojourners and the Department of Health for the District of Columbia. During his time in Washington D.C., Mr. Pannell was the communication director for Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) and Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada). Prior to working in Washington, Mr. Pannell worked in the entertainment and investment banking industries. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.