Street Love

by Walter Dean Myers

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0064407322
• ISBN13: 9780064407328
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Amistad Books for Young Readers
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 7.2"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 and higher

Customer Reviews

Greatest Book Ever

This book was great. I recieved it right on time and is a great read. Reccomended to anyone who loves love stories.

From a school librarian's point of view...

Street Love is an outstanding book for any student to read. Though this book is based on the inner city life and love, I feel any child would benefit from reading this book. Actually, if I were an English teacher, I would have students read and study this book after reading Shakespeare. Students would have an easier time breaking down the poetry and symbols in this book over Shakespeare and really enjoy it more. It could almost be seen as a reward reading for doing Shakespeare. I think we have finally found Shakespeare from an African American/Urban/Hip Hop point of view. Below, are the focus groups I would recommend to read this book: - Any student(Though this book may focus on African American life, this book was written for everyone to explore the inner-city African American culture.) -Inner-city teens -Students reading/studying Shakespeare -Basketball playing teens -Teens who parents and/or family members have recently been locked up in jail or prison. -Teens in a foster home situation -Teens who like/love poetry -Home-schooled students -Anybody!(An adult, just like me.)

Street Love by Walter Dean Myers

Myers is an excellent writer for young adults, as well as adults. Here he weaves a meaningful and realistic tale of love from both sides of the track, through poetry. I have loved everything I have read by Walter Dean Myers, and I hope he keeps the books coming!

A breathtaking and extaordinarily written love story

Walter Dean Myers --- National Book Award Finalist, Coretta Scott King Author Honor Winner and the first Michael L. Printz Award recipient --- has climbed to even greater heights with his latest work, STREET LOVE. A fluid mixture of poetry and prose, this sweeping book is filled with such gorgeous imagery, street-talk language and beatific, soul-stirring rhythm that just one read-through will surely take readers' breath away. A bittersweet, tell-it-like-it-is love story between two Harlem teens, STREET LOVE aims straight for the jugular and eloquently hits its mark. Sixteen-year-old Damien has risen above his gang-infested environment and is on the track for success. He gets excellent grades, he's been accepted to Brown University, and his parents want nothing more than for him to get off the streets and make them proud. But Damien has other ideas: "My folks are laying lines on me like/They've written out the part and all/I got to do is get to a place called Start/And follow the road to fame and glory /A PhD in mucho buckology/Two point five kids and a quick apology/To the starving folks in East Ain'tGotNothingVille/While I look down from Sugar Hill and tell/Myself how phat my program is." He has his eyes set on a different kind of future, possibly one with Junice --- the unknown, quiet beauty he's seen around the neighborhood. Junice, however, lives a disparate life than what Damien is accustomed to. Her mother is in the Bedford Hills Prison for drug possession --- a 25-year sentence. Her sister, Melissa, is too young to take care of herself, and her grandmother, Miss Ruby, can barely remember her own name. Both her grandfather and father have long been out of the picture. In a word, she is slowly being eaten alive by her past and the pasts of the downtrodden before her. "No, it is all cycle and recycle/What the great-grandmother has done/Is to rut the earth for her children/What the grandmother has done/Is to widen the furrow for her children/What the mother has done/Is to square the pit/Deepening it for the ritual to come/And here I sit, grave deep among the/Waiting worms, staking my claim/As they stake theirs." As Damien begins wooing her, and Junice --- however fierce her trepidation --- unwittingly gives her assent, the two struggle to fight their virtually non-existent odds in order to make a worthwhile life for themselves. At the novel's close, the outcome of their future together is left open-ended, although they have both sacrificed greatly to give it their best shot. "We will make it...I plan to survive." STREET LOVE is nothing short of extraordinary. Myers's talent for turning words on end to spin phrase after powerful phrase is truly amazing --- his alliterations and cadenced pairing will roll off the tongue, beckoning to be read aloud. The virtually insurmountable weight of repression and despair that haunts inner-city living is evident on every page of this novel, yet there is a touch of the effervescent that sets this story a

Takin it to the streets...

Have you ever been in love with someone who was totally wrong for you? (It's a rhetorical question, don't think too hard on it.) If you've never experienced the uncertainty that comes with the territory, Walter Dean Myers' new book, Street Love will school you on the do's and don'ts of these emotional waters. Written entirely in free verse poetics, Street Love is the story of Damien, a 17 year old basketball star who excels in school and seems to have a bright and shining future on the horizon. Enter Junice. Junice is a 16 year old woman trying desperately to keep her life together. While her mother serves out a 25 year sentence for selling drugs, Junice must do everything she can to protect and support herself and her younger sister, Melissa. Living a life of borderline desperation and urgency, Junice certainly has no time for boys. Enter Damien. Who wants to read a book written as poems? Trust me, you do. This isn't the flowery romanticism of long dead authors (although you would do well to pick them up, too). This lyrical onslaught has a tempo all its own. It is the harmonizing of lovestruck characters set to the rhythm of the street and it's groovy.