Walter Dean Myers
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.2 - AR Pts: 11
Language
English
Description
Over the years Walter Dean Myers' powerful anti-war novel for young adults has been consistently placed on the list of most frequently challenged books. Reasons given for its banning are profanity, racism, a homosexual agenda and graphic violence. Myers offered this comment about the book's banning. "What I did not want it to be was the usual one-sided idea which eliminates the pain and horror." Published in 1988, Fallen Angels continues...
4) Scorpions
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG+ - BL: 3.7 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Formats
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.
5) Shooter
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.8 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Description
Written in the form of interviews, reports, and journal entries, the story of three troubled teenagers ends in a tragic school shooting.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 5.6 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
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."
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 8 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Formats
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.
10) Lockdown
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG+ - BL: 4.7 - AR Pts: 7
Language
English
Formats
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."--Title page verso.
11) Jazz
Author
Language
English
Description
Illustrations and rhyming text celebrate the roots of jazz music.
12) Game
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG+ - BL: 4.9 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Description
If Harlem high school senior Drew Lawson is going to realize his dream of playing college, then professional, basketball, he will have to improve at being coached and being a team player, especially after a new--white--student threatens to take the scouts' attention away from him.
13) Darius & Twig
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.6 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Two best friends, a writer and a runner, deal with bullies, family issues, social pressures, and their quest for success coming out of Harlem"--
15) Dope sick
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.5 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Description
Seeing no way out of his difficult life in Harlem, seventeen-year-old Jeremy "Lil J" Dance flees into a house after a drug deal goes awry and meets a weird man who shows different turning points in Lil J's life when he could have made better choices.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5.9 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
Formats
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
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.1 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Formats
Description
The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random shooting, Paul volunteers 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.