BIOGRAPHY

Myers was born in West Virginia in 1937 but spent most of his childhood and young adult life living in Harlem. He was raised by foster parents. He remembers a happy but difficult time as a teenager. He had a speech impediment which caused him to write poetry and short stories and early in life he acquired an early love of reading.

In 1954 he quit high school and joined the army. He worked at a variety of agencies including the NY Dept of Labor, the post office, etc. During this same time he was writing articles for various magazines. The turning point in his career was when in 1969 he won a contest for his book Where Does a Day Go?. He received his degree from Empire State College in 1984.

Myers explains his feeling for the young adult novel, “The special place of the young adult novel should be in its ability to address the needs of the reader to understand his or her relationships with the world, with each other, and with adults. The young adult novel often allows the reader to directly identify with a protagonist of similar interests and development.” He is a compassionate, introspective person who believes, “It is this language of values which I hope to bring to my books…I want to bring values to those who have not been valued, and I want to etch those values in terms of the ideal. Young people need ideals which identify them, and their lives, as central…guideposts which tell them what they can be, should be, and indeed are. “

(Taken From: Walter Dean Myers 1994 “Margaret A. Edwards Award Acceptance Speech” Journal of Youth Services in Libraries. Vol 8, No.2(Winter 1995)129-133.

(Information taken from http://www.wcilw.rutgers.edu/~kvander/myers.html)

LIST OF TITLES IN THE LIBRARY

Call # Title

FIC MYE Monster

FIC MYE Won’t Know Till I Get There

SC MYE 145^th Street: Short Stories

FIC MYE Glory Field

FIC MYE Hoops

FIC MYE Somewhere in the darkness

FIC MYE Scorpions

FIC MYE Slam

FIC MYE Motown and Didi: a love story

326.097 MYE Amistad: A Long Road To Freedom

FIC MYE The Righteous Revenge of Artemis Bonner

FIC MYE Crystal

FIC MYE Fallen Angels

FIC MYE The Outside Shot

AWARDS TO WALTER DEAN MYERS

Hoops ALA Best Books for Young Adults Citation, 1981

Edgar Allen Poe Award Runner-Up, 1982

The Outside Shot Parent’s Choice Award, 1984

Motown and Didi Coretta Scott King Award for Fiction, 1985

Fallen Angels Coretta Scott King Award for Fiction, 1988

ALA Best Books for Young Adults, 1988

Scorpions ALA Best Books for Young Adults, 1988

Newberry Honor Book, 1989

ALA Notable Book Citation, 1988