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In His Own Words...
"I am a product of Harlem and of the values, color, toughness, and caring that I found there as a child. I learned my flat jump shot in the church basement and got my first kiss during recess at Bible school. I played the endless street games kids played in the pre-television days and paid enough attention to candy and junk food to dutifully alarm my mother.
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"I had a speech difficulty but didn't view it as anything special. It wasn't necessary for me to be much of a social creature once I discovered books. Books took me, not so much to foreign lands and fanciful adventures, but to a place within myself that I have been constantly exploring ever since.
"The George Bruce Branch of the Public Library was my most treasured place. I couldn't believe my luck in discovering that what I enjoyed most�reading�was free. And I was tough enough to carry the books home through the streets without too many incidents.
"At sixteen it seemed a good idea to leave school, and so I did. On my seventeenth birthday I joined the army. After the army there were jobs-some good, some bad, few worth mentioning. Leaving school seemed less like a good idea.
| Walter Dean Myers has written many highly acclaimed books for children and young adults, including Angel to Angel, Glorious Angels, Brown Angels, and the Newbery Honor book, Scorpions. He received the Coretta Scott King Award for Now is Your Time! The African-American Struggle for Freedom, and the 1994 Margaret E. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award given by the American Library Association. He lives in Jersey City, NJ. |
"Writing for me has been many things. It was a way to overcome the hindrance of speech problems as I tried to reach out to the world. It was a way of establishing my humanity in a world that often ignores the humanity of those in less favored positions. It was a way to make a few extra dollars when they were badly needed.
"What I want to do with the writing keeps changing, too. Perhaps I just get clearer in what it is I am doing. I'm sure that after I'm dead someone will lay it all out nicely. I'd hate to see what kind of biography my cat, Askia, would write about me. Probably something like, "Walter Dean Myers had enormous feet, didn't feed me on time, and often sat in my favorite chair." At any rate, what I think I'm doing now is rediscovering the innocence of children that I once took for granted. I cannot relive it or reclaim it, but I can expose it and celebrate it in the books I write. I really like people�I mean, I really like people�and children are some of the best people I know.
"I've always felt it a little pretentious to write about yourself, but it's not too bad if you don't write too much."
A sample of some of Walter Dean Myers Many Titles:
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by Walter Dean Myers, illustrated by Christopher Myers From Booklist
Myers' original verse is unsettling if young people know the reference from the Billie Holiday song, but unclear if they don't ("strange fruit" is defined in the glossary). The accompanying illustration, though it's one of the less inspired ones, helps clarify things--a boy walks in a crowd carrying a sign saying, "yesterday a man was lynched." But there's no cohesion between the spreads, and the next one features a blues singer at a mike: "The thrill is gone, but love is still in my heart . . . I can feel you in the music and it's tearing me apart." Much of Myers' poetry here is terrific, by turn, sweet, sharp, ironic, but it's the memorable collage artwork, executed in the bluest of blue ink and brown paper, that will draw readers first. Once inside the book, some children will immediately hear the songs the poetry sings; others will have to listen more closely. Ilene Cooper Copyright — American Library Association. All rights reserved “This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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by Walter Dean Myers, Illustrated by Nina Laden, and performed by Charles Turner
Amazon.com Undoubtedly one of America's greatest singers, Anderson was hardly known in her own country because of her race--music schools ignored her applications ("We don't take colored!") and even after she began singing professionally, many venues only featured white performers. Ryan's well-paced story becomes especially poignant as she recounts Anderson's overwhelming success in Europe ("one newspaper in Sweden called it 'Marian Fever' ... In Austria, the world-famous conductor Arturo Toscanini announced that what he had heard, one was privileged to hear only once in a hundred years"). The book reaches its climax with a wordless, deep brown two-page spread from Selznick, a crowd's-eye view of Anderson singing at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, an historic concert that drew an integrated audience of over 75,000. Ryan's simple, metered text (punctuated frequently by lyrics) captures the quiet drama of Anderson's story, and kids will especially identify with the confusion and frustration of young Marian. And as with the pair's previous collaboration, Selznick's rich illustrations ably convey the undeniable strength and courage of a talented, determined woman. (Ages 4 to 8) “Paul Hughes
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 JazzClick to order via Amazon ISBN: 0823415457 A Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Books and NAACP Image Award Nominee From bebop to New Orleans, from ragtime to boogie, and every style in between, this collection of Walter Dean Myers's energetic and engaging poems, accompanied by Christopher Myers's bright and exhilarating paintings, celebrates different styles of the American art form, jazz. Jazz takes readers on a musical journey from jazz's beginnings to the present day. Time line, glossary.
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LoveAmazon
ISBN: 0060280794 Book Description
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The Glory FieldClick to order via Amazon Format:
Mass Market Paperback, 288pp. One of the best reviewed books of 1994, the Newbery author's novel follows five generations of one African-American family from Africa to a South Carolina plantation through the Civil War, the end of segregation and beyond, to a moving finale, when a young drug-addicted cousin is brought home to the glory field for a day of reunion and renewal. |
 (Click title or book to purchase on-line) Format: Paperback, 1st ed., 140pp. "After Uncle Ugly's gunned down by that sneaky dog Catfish Grimes, 15-year-old Artemis leaves his sainted Dear Mother and turns cowboy avenger. . . . The pace is brisk, the tongue-in-cheek humor is beautifully maintained [in this] fist-swinging adventure." 'BL. "An entertaining yarn that could well introduce new readers to historical fiction." |
(click to buy book online now) 2000 Coretta Scott King Author Award Book Format: Hardcover, 1st ed., 288pp.
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 Slam!Sixteen-year-old Greg "Slam" Harris can do it all on the basketball court. His grades aren't so hot, though. And when his teachers jam his troubles in his face, Slam blows up. He never doubted himself on the court until he found himself going one on one with his future |
| Fallen Angels, Walter Dean Myers |
Related Links
LEARNING ABOUT WALTER DEAN MYERS. Compiled by: Marilyn
Fischer, Carol Levandowski, Carol Marlowe
www.scils.rutgers.edu/special/kay/myers.html
Walter Dean Myers, the recipient of the first annual
Virginia Hamilton Literary Award
www.kent.edu/virginiahamiltonconf/Myersbio.htm
Blues Journey
The Blues of Flats Brown