Bad Boy

Bad Boy, A Memoir.  Walter Dean Myers.  Harper Collins Publishers, New York.  2001.


Annotation:
Walter Dean Myers writes about the challenges of growing up in Harlem in the 1940's and 50's.  He was what we would now call ADD/HD.  His teachers called him simply a "Bad Boy".  His stories lovingly recall his adoptive parents, his teachers, and his journey through school.  Funny and poignant, these stories tell the tale of a young man trying to find his way in a hostile world.

Book Talk:
Walter Dean Myers was adopted by his father's first wife, Florence Dean, after the death of his own mother.  Walter was taken to live with the people he would come to know as his family, and moved to Harlem, in New York City.

Walter grew up surrounded by the love of his adopted family in a neighborhood rich with color and history. 

Unfortunately, trouble seemed to follow Walter around.  From breaking his heels when he jumped off the church roof, to standing up to a gang when they were picking on someone, Walter frequently found himself at the wrong end of a problem.

Walter began to find his only escape from the world around him in the books he read.  Afraid to let anyone know that he loved reading, he would hide his books, skip school, and hide out in trees to read the books he loved so much.  He would write in his journals, attempting to emulate the styles of the authors he was reading.

Join Walter as he tells the tale of his long, twisted journey from "Bad Boy" to Award-Winning Young Adult Author in Bad Boy.

Author's Web Site:
http://www.walterdeanmyers.net/

Reviewer's Note:
When I first began teaching 20-odd years ago, I taught in the inner-city.  I was a solid middle class kid with the thought that I could change the world.  I learned far more from those kids in the years I taught there than I had in the 22 years of living I'd had before then. 

I no longer teach in the inner-city, but the hopelessness, the sense of entrapment, and of despair that the residents have is something I will never forget.

Walter Dean Myers is one of the authors out there who I feel comes from a place of understanding.  He has walked the walk.  He knows the subject about which he writes, and he is powerful and masterful in speaking to his reader about the situations in which his characters find themselves.

This book is a stark look at growing up in Harlem.  The choices that he had facing him at the time.  How he personally triumphed against the odds.  He is very frank about violence, and drinking.  At the time when he grew up, street drug dealers were not the norm... and the street violence that we writes about is different than the street violence that our cities see today. 

I was fortunate enough to find a cache of "new"  Walter Dean Myers' books on the shelves the last time I went into the library.  This was one of them, as was Lockdown.  So glad I found them!  I have one more of his books to review, I hope to finish it in the next couple of days.

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