This groundbreaking novel in verse from Walter Dean Myers—two-time Newbery Honor winner and five-time Coretta Scott King Award winner—is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story set in Harlem. Share this one with readers taken with books by Jason Reynolds, Nic Stone, and Elizabeth Acevedo.
Whether read at home or in the classroom, and alongside the original inspiration or on its own. Street Love is sure to spark opinions and conversations.
"This verse novel, in which entire poems dazzle readers with rhyme and rhythm and voice, finds Damien, a straight-A student, headed for Brown University. But he falls in love with Junice, a girl whose mother has just been incarcerated for selling drugs, and his direction could change. Readers enjoy multiple perspectives on this romance and the decision Damien makes." (Kirkus starred review)
"Hip-hop fans, readers of poetry, and hopeless romantics will respond to the emotional vibrancy of this powerful work." (VOYA)
Your first love is totally wrong for you.Do you follow your heart?Or do you run away?
Walter Dean Myers was a New York Times bestselling author, Printz Award winner, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, two-time Newbery Honor recipient, and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Maria Russo, writing in the New York Times, called Myers "one of the greats and a champion of diversity in children’s books well before the cause got mainstream attention."
Walter Dean Myers was the New York Times bestselling author of Monster, the winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award; a former National Ambassador for Young People's Literature; and an inaugural NYC Literary Honoree. Myers received every single major award in the field of children's literature. He was the author of two Newbery Honor Books and six Coretta Scott King Awardees. He was the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults, a three-time National Book Award Finalist, as well as the first-ever recipient of the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Autumn in Harlem. Fume-choked leaves, already Yellowed, crack in the late September Breeze. Weeds, city tough, city brittle, Push defiantly along the concrete edges Of Malcolm X Boulevard. On 137th Street A toothless sidewalk vendor neatly stacks His dark knit caps beside the plastic cell Phone covers. Shadows indistinct in August heat Now deepen and grow long across The wide streets. Homeless men sniff the air and Know that somewhere the Hawk stirs. Harlem is not an easy place To grow old, and so the young Are everywhere, Pouring from the buses, city dancing To the rhythms of the street, City dancing to the frantic spin of life In the fast lane.
