Walter Dean Myers
4) Jazz
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Series
Language
English
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Description
Illustrations and rhyming text celebrate the roots of jazz music.
5) Juba!
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Language
English
Description
In Five Points, New York, in the 1840s, African American teenager William Henry "Juba" Lane works hard to achieve his dream of becoming a professional dancer but his real break comes when he is invited to perform in England. Based on the life of Master Juba; includes historical note.
6) Kick
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Language
English
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Description
Told in their separate voices, thirteen-year-old soccer star Kevin and police sergeant Brown, who knew his father, try to keep Kevin out of juvenile hall after he is arrested on very serious charges.
7) Lockdown
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Language
English
Description
Teenage Reese, serving time at a juvenile detention facility, gets a lesson in making it through hard times from an unlikely friend with a harrowing past.
Author
Language
English
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Description
Few men in American history are as controversial as Malcolm X. In this provocative biography, Myers, winner of a Newbery Honor and four-time Coretta Scott King Award winner, presents a forthright portrait of a complex man whose life reflected the major events of our times.
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English
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Description
The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random shooting, Paul works at a Harlem soup kitchen, where he listens to lessons about "the social contract" from an elderly African American man and mentors a seventeen-year-old unwed mother who wants to make it to college on a basketball scholarship.
10) Fallen angels
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Language
English
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Description
Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.
11) Scorpions
Author
Language
English
Description
After reluctantly taking on the leadership of the Harlem gang, the Scorpions, Jamal finds that his enemies treat him with respect when he acquires a gun--until a tragedy occurs.
12) Riot
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Language
English
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Description
In 1863, fifteen-year-old Claire, the daughter of an Irish mother and a black father, faces ugly truths and great danger when Irish immigrants, enraged by the Civil War and a federal draft, lash out against blacks and wealthy "swells" of New York City.
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Language
English
Description
What is it to be an American? In lyrical, soul-searching free verse and seamless, evocative paintings, the father-son team who presented Jazz, delivers a heartfelt and thought-provoking homage to this country. Reflective and non-judgmental, stretching across a tumultuous history, following dreams of and struggles for freedom, this is a masterful and stunning presentation of patriotism through poetry, quotations and depictions of myriad Americans—from
...17) Crystal
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Language
English
Description
Fifteen-year-old Crystal has difficulty trying to reconcile her personal and school life with the sexy, sophisticated persona her career as a quickly advancing high-fashion model has forced upon her.
Author
Language
English
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Description
Acclaimed writer Walter Dean Myers celebrates the people of Harlem with these powerful and soulful first-person poems in the voices of the residents who make up the legendary neighborhood: basketball players, teachers, mail carriers, jazz artists, maids, veterans, nannies, students, and more. Exhilarating and electric, these poems capture the energy and resilience of a neighborhood and a people.
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Black Authors: Youth Biographies (SCPL-YS)
Black History Month - ROD Children's
OBD Black History Month (February) - YOUTH
Black History Month - ROD Children's
OBD Black History Month (February) - YOUTH
Formats
Description
Frederick Douglass was a self-educated slave in the South who grew up to become an icon. He was a leader of the abolitionist movement, a celebrated writer, an esteemed speaker, and a social reformer, proving that, as he said, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."