Showing results by author "Walter Dean Myers" in All Categories

Growing up is tough...really tough. But what if you had a handbook that told you how to figure things out? How to stay out of trouble? How to think about success? How to think about the guy on the street?

As a 14-year-old, he was Malcolm Little, the president of his class and a top student. At 16, he was hustling tips at a Boston nightclub. In Harlem, he was known as Detroit Red, a slick street operator. At 19, he was back in Boston, leading a gang of burglars. At 20, he was in prison. It was in prison that Malcolm Little started the journey that would lead him to adopt the name Malcolm X, and there he developed his beliefs about what being Black means in America: beliefs that shook America then and still shake America today. 

On Harlem’s 145th Street, things happen that don’t happen anywhere else in the world. Get to know Big Joe, who’s throwing his own funeral while he’s here to enjoy it, and everyone’s invited. Meet Kitty and Mack, teens with a love story more real than anything they’ve ever known. Follow Monkeyman, the quietest kid on the block and the last person you’d expect the Tigros gang to target. And don’t miss the block party of the year - the whole neighborhood will be there. From danger and despair to hilarity and joy, literary legend Walter Dean Myers captures every mood.

It’s one single steamy July day at the West 4th Street Court in New York City, otherwise known as the Cage. Hotshot baller ESPN is wooing the scouts, Boo is struggling to guard the weird new guy named Waco, a Spike Lee wannabe has video rolling, and virgin Irene is sizing up six-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch-tall Chester. Nine of young-adult literature’s top writers reveal how it all goes down in this searing novel in short stories that each ingeniously pick up where the last one ends.

New York City's Five Points district in 1846 is a volatile mixture of poor blacks and immigrants from Europe. William Henry Lane is a teenager working odd jobs to make ends meet, but he really loves to dance. Watching the other dancers in Five Points and practicing when he can, he gets so good that he begins to call himself "Master Juba".

Dahlia is a Low Gater: a sheep in a storm, struggling to survive completely on her own. The Gaters live in closed safe communities, protected from the Sturmers, mercenary thugs. And the C-8, a consortium of giant companies, control global access to finance, media, food, water, and energy resources - and they are only getting bigger and even more cutthroat. Dahlia, a computer whiz, joins forces with an ex-rocker, an ex-con, a chess prodigy, an ex-athlete, and a soldier wannabe. Their goal: to sabotage the C-8.

During a long, hot July in 1863, the worst race riots the United States has ever seen erupt in New York City. Earlier that year, desperate for more Union soldiers, President Abraham Lincoln instituted a draft - a draft that would allow the wealthy to escape serving in the army by paying a $300 waiver, more than a year's income for the recent immigrant Irish. And on July 11, as the first drawing takes place in Lower Manhattan, the city of New York explodes in rage and fire.

The opening line of this call-and-response style verse asks the question that forms the thread throughout: Blues, what do you mean to me? In a magnificent collaboration of words and song, a timeline of the blues is presented in a soulful reading with dramatic musical accompaniment that offers a compelling evocation of the blues experience.

This scorching story tells of a father and son trying to reach out to each other over years of loss and absence. An almost unbearably moving recording.

The two-time National Book Award finalist discusses his historical novel about the New York City Draft Riots in 1863 with middle graders and teens ages 12 and up. The event includes a discussion with the audience.

For a young adolescent, David Curry has a lot to contend with. He loves and fears Reuben, his troubled father. His older brother, Ty, is turning into someone David doesn't know anymore, or trust. And his mom is struggling to hold everything together.

Cameron: "Deep inside, you know that whoever gets up in your face gets there because he knows you're nothing, and he knows that you know it too."

Zander Scott and his friends Kambui, LaShonda, and Bobbi are in trouble. Even though they’re students at DaVinci Academy for the Gifted and Talented in Harlem, their grades are slipping, and Mr. Culpepper, the assistant principal and "chief executioner", is ready to be rid of them.

In this second book of The Cruisers series, the term “gifted and talented” takes on a whole new meaning for Zander, Kambui, LaShonda, and Bobbi - a group of misfits who attend Da Vinci Academy, a school in Harlem for only the brightest kids. Their friend Sidney Aronofsky is considered one of the best chess players in the city. When Sidney is arrested for trying to buy drugs, it comes as a shock to those who know him, especially the Cruisers. Sidney loves chess, but the pressure never lets up.

Abdullah Syed Hari is fourteen years old. He loves his family and his friends. And he is a Somali pirate. A short story from Guys Read: Thriller, edited by Jon Scieszka.

The Cruiser, the alternative newspaper published by Zander and his crew of middle school misfits, is alive and well. And now there’s plenty to report on when LaShonda, one of the Cruisers, steps into the spotlight with her costume designs for an upcoming play. LaShonda’s designs get rave reviews, but she soon learns that show business is filled with challenges and choices. LaShonda is forced to consider what’s more important — fame or loyalty to her autistic brother.

The Cruisers are in trouble - again. The freedom of expression they've enjoyed by publishing their own school newspaper, The Cruiser, has spread all the way to England, where kids from a school "across the pond" are now contributors to their own school's most talked-about publication. When photos start to go alongside the articles written by kids, things get suspicious. Zander, Kambui, LaShonda, Bobbi - and a bunch of students from Harlem’s Da Vinci Academy and London’s Phoenix School - come to learn that words and pictures in a newspaper don’t always tell the whole story.

After witnessing the annihilation of his people by El Muerte's legions, young Tarik undergoes the training that will enable him to destroy this fierce leader.