Babylon Boyz

by Jess Mowry

Book Overview

In this tense teen novel, three struggling boys in embattled West Oakland are faced with a choice sure to change their lives--for better or worse.

Dante, Pook, and Wyatt are eighth graders in a rundown school in West Oakland, California, plagued by guns, gangs, drugs, and violence, all overseen by inept or indifferent teachers. The three friends are used to only being able to react to the world around them, dodging blows rather than...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0689825927
• ISBN13: 9780689825927
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Aladdin Paperbacks
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 14 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 9 to 12

Customer Reviews

Babylon Boyz

There are 3 black kids from Babylon. Pook is a Homosexual, Dante has a heart problem, and Wyatt is just...fat. The kids live in the ghetto, and go through a lot of hardships trying to find themselves, and deciding what's right and wrong. The people they meet aren't who you think they are when you first read it. This book is the best book I've read so far. You get so into the book, you forget everything else. Everything about inner-city life is in here. Poverty, Pre-marital intercourse,drugs, Teen-age pregnancies and the difficulities making it through a day of this. They could make a tv movie out of this...I'll be the first to watch it. The book is not for kids under 15. It has adult language and adult content. You will keep on wanting to read the book, it's almost addicting.

A Must Read Book

In the novel, Babylon Boyz, by Jess Mowry, three newly teen boys go through a serious of risky situations in the inner-city streets of Oakland, which they call Babylon. Pook, an out of the closet homosexual, Wyatt, an overweight boy and Dante, a boy with a heart condition. They meet many people along the way, such as Radgi, a homeless person that has a big surprise in the end, Air Touch, who threatens Dante's life with a gun and Jinx that "helps" Pook with his first homosexual encounter. They do such things as dealing cocaine, giving birth to a baby on a couch and almost getting arrested for tagging bathrooms, several times. Throughout the story these boys search for an answer for ways to get out of Babylon and in the end, they figure out, if they would stop searching so hard, that it's right in front of their face. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this book a nine. I really enjoyed this book. It was extremely interesting and enlightening. I was mainly intrigued with they boys everyday life. In mine, I have never come close to being shot in the head nor dealing drugs, so I like to read about a life that is different than mine, to expand my knowledge of different worlds. With this book, you are into it the second you read it. And while reading it you won't run into many problems, my only problem was figuring out who was who, but by the middle of the book, that was settled. Other difficulties may include trying to figure out what the slang means, but most of it is pretty straightforward. This book is for anyone who wants to know more about places other than were they live, if they don't already live in a "ghetto". It's really a book that almost anyone would like except little kids, it definitely has some mature subjects in it. A quote that I was really captivated by was when a man said to Dante, "Free will isn't free son. You pay for it every time you make a choice. And even if you choose not to choose, you've still made a choice." This means so much to me. Every single word in it relates to the whole meaning. The meaning is this, how when you make any choice or you decide to do something or even decide not to do something, you are always making choices whether they are good or bad, smart or stupid, right or wrong. And free will, something you are supposed to have no problem doing and you will always have some obstacle in the way and that's life.

Babylon with a bullet!

I found Jess Mowry's book Babylon Boyz in my school library when I had to do a book report and first I thought oh yeah here is just another one of those boring "young adult books" by some old person who doesn't know anything about Black kids. Man, was this a surprise! This book is ON THA REAL! It's a story about three homeboys who live in West Oakland California. There is something different about each one of them that keeps them from being liked by most of the "G's" and "cool" kids in their school. Dante who is 13 and the main character was born to a mom who was on crack (she died). There is something wrong with his heart so he can't play sports or do a lot of physical things. The hospital could fix it but that would take a lot of money. Another boy named Wyatt is a great big fat kid who likes animals and going to the zoo. He has a big snake and a family of pet rats in his room which he shares with his little brother Cheo who is also very fat. Their mom runs a little cafe down by the docks. Dante's other homie is a muscular boy of 14. His name is Pook and his "problem" is that he's tha only gay boy in his school. He is a good student and wants to be a doctor but he doesn't have tha money to go to Medical School. I am not gay myself but reading about him helped me to understand gay people a lot better. All three have known each other since they were toothless. Dante's dad is an engineer on a tugboat and is gone a lot of tha time but there is a lot of love between him and his son. Tha story is set when tha boys find a big pack of coke that was thrown away by a drug dealer when he was getting chased by tha cops. His name is Air Touch. He's 18 and a typical wannabe gangstuh. Tha three boys also make friends with a mysterious homeless kid named Radgi and try to help him get off the street. At first tha boys think what they found is only crack and are ready to give it tha flush. But then they find out that it's pure coke and worth hella money. Then tha BIG question is do they try and sell it to get tha money each one needs to make their lives better when they know it will be cooked into crack and sold right back in their hood, or do they do tha right thing and flush it? This is a very interesting story because it's not like many other "young people books" where the plot and characters are very simple. There are many other interesting characters like Kelly who is a 14 year old Korean boy who's dad owns a liquor store, and Jinx who is a crack addict at 13 but who is trying to get clean. I really liked tha descriptions of tha characters in this book. If you have any imagination at all you should be able to see every one of them. This is a very deep book and there are so many other things goin-on plus tha main story that you never know what's going to happen on tha next page. There were many surprises. Some were good and others made me sad or angry. There were other things that made me laugh out loud. Tha ending is an

This is a very important book.

I am 13 years old and this was a very important book for me. It was making a discovery that I was not alone and that somebody cared enough to write about my own life and my own world. This is a very real book and I would recommend it to anybody who wants to know what inner city life is like for young people today. I found all of the scenes very real and all of the characters could have been people I know.

A book about a group of gifted kids trapped in poverty

I gave this book 5 stars because Jess Mowry, author, did not forget who his reading audience was and he relied on using all of his knowledge of the ghetto. In the book a lot of slang was used and a lot of situations that only happen to kids in the ghetto. I really liked the book and I hope that Jess Mowry continues with this writing style, because I feel that he has the ability the attract teenagers who would normally not read books. I feel that Dante, Pook, and Wyatt are perfect for the tragedy of being stuck in the ghetto because they don't have the money or any connections to get them out.