Walter Dean Myers

Walter Dean Myers

  • Submitted By: hijean99
  • Date Submitted: 11/24/2013 9:23 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1202
  • Page: 5
  • Views: 53

Walter Dean Myers is an African-American writer of young adult fiction and children’s books. His novels are about teens and the challenges they face. He is known to write tough stories about kids who don't appear in most storybooks," asserted Sue Corbett in a Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service report. "Children whose fathers are absent or jailed. About children who share playgrounds with drug dealers and gangs. About teens struggling to maintain their dignity and living with poverty, violence, and fear."
Walter Milton Myers was born August 12, 1937 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, Myers lost his mother, Mary Green Myers, at age two, during the birth of his younger sister Imogene. Since his father, George Ambrose, was struggling economically, Walter and two of his sisters were informally adopted by family friends Florence and Herbert Dean. The Dean family moved him to Harlem. His foster mother, a half-Indian and half-German woman, taught Walter to read at the age of four, even though she was barely literate. She read to him every day from True Romance Magazine. He had a speech impediment when he was little, which made it hard for him to communicate with others, but he overcame it by expressing himself through writing short stories and poems. At the age of ten he began to write fiction. His favorite places in his childhood were the basketball courts and the library. The library was a favorite place because he couldn't believe that one of the things he enjoyed most, reading, was free.
The years Walter attended high school were hard for him, because of his speech impediment. But that didn't stop him from writing. In high school he was a good student and could read well but he was behavioral problem. He once said he arrived at school every day read to conquer the world, but no one could understand what he was saying. That was very frustrating for him and he responded by being very angry. Even though he was a good student in school, he knew his family couldn’t afford...

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