![]() ![]() ![]() Modeled after Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, Walter Dean Myers made the form very much his own. Put this on the shelf next to Chris Raschka's Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop (1992) and see if anyone can sit still when the book is read aloud. Often, he wrote in the voice of a New England farmer, and his poems were intended to be read aloud. For Harlem high school student Drew Lawson, basketball is the only ticket into college, because his grades are lacking. Walter Dean Myers was raised in Harlem in the 1940's, and these first-person poems were inspired by the people and the rhythms and the energy of his Harlem neighborhood. ![]() Christopher Myers sets his scenes to match the streets, fire escapes, jazz clubs, and kitchens of Harlem, and makes them by turns starkly stylized as an Egyptian mask or sweet as a stained glass window. Backing up Lady Day on the radio." A strong series of images of ink and gouache capture the beauty of faces, from the very old to very young, from golden to blue- black. The imagery springs to life at once: "Ring-a-levio warriors/Stickball heroes" "a full lipped, full hipped/Saint washing collard greens. Louis, from Trinidad, "Harlem was a promise." Listing the streets and the churches, naming Langston and Countee, Shango and Jesus, the text is rich with allusion. To newcomers from Waycross, Georgia, from East St. 1536, etc.) gives poetry a jazz backbeat to tell the story of Harlem, the historic center of African-American culture in New York City. A hot new artist and his distinguished father fashion a picture book with a stirring sound at its center. ![]()
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