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    Street Love
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    Street Love
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    Street Love
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    Street Love

    By Walter Dean Myers

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

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    About this ebook

    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 conversations.

    "This verse novel, in which entire poems dazzle readers with rhyme and rhythm and voice, finds Damien, a straight-A student, headed for Brown University. But he falls in love with Junice, a girl whose mother has just been incarcerated for selling drugs, and his direction could change. Readers enjoy multiple perspectives on this romance and the decision Damien makes." (Kirkus starred review)

    "Hip-hop fans, readers of poetry, and hopeless romantics will respond to the emotional vibrancy of this powerful work." (VOYA)

    Your first love is totally wrong for you.
    Do you follow your heart?
    Or do you run away?

    Walter Dean Myers was a New York Times bestselling author, Printz Award winner, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, two-time Newbery Honor recipient, and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Maria Russo, writing in the New York Times, called Myers "one of the greats and a champion of diversity in children’s books well before the cause got mainstream attention."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780061975080
    Author

    Walter Dean Myers

    Walter Dean Myers was the New York Times bestselling author of Monster, the winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award; a former National Ambassador for Young People's Literature; and an inaugural NYC Literary Honoree. Myers received every single major award in the field of children's literature. He was the author of two Newbery Honor Books and six Coretta Scott King Awardees. He was the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults, a three-time National Book Award Finalist, as well as the first-ever recipient of the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.

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    Reviews for Street Love

    4/5

    64 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Junice and Damian, two high school students attending the same school, whose lifestyles are worlds apart. Damain's middle class parents see only college in their son's future while Junice, whose mother is in jail, is trying to keep she and her younger sister out of the system. This tale of love across social classes is told in free verse with an upbeat rhythm that would be a good theater read in Literature classes for high school.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This slim volume, written in free verse, tells the story of Damien and Junice, two Harlem teenagers who fall in love despite all the forces against them. Junice’s mother has just been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for possession and distribution of drugs, and she has no one to look after her and her nine-year-old sister, Melissa. Damien’s mother and father are proud of his accomplishments, including acceptance to Brown, but they want no part of Junice or her troubles. How the two lovers meet, interact, and ultimately decide their fate unfolds in short poems written from multiple points of view. Sometimes we get glimpses into Damien’s thoughts, other times Junice’s, the mothers’, and even the social worker assigned to Junice’s case. Myers displays his considerable talents through these vignettes as each poetic voice is at once unique and in harmony with the other poems.Both Damien and Junice are strong characters. Damien is thoughtful and kind, while Junice refuses to let her situation define her. She even tells Damien at one point, “I am only what you see, this stick/Of a woman trying to make enough magic/To negotiate the shadows of these streets...My life is not packaged” (109). The adult characters get less sympathetic portrayals; though they all have their reasons for wanting to keep Damien and Junice apart, their cynicism reveals their powerlessness. Students will enjoy the gritty setting, which gets plenty of loving description by Myers. However, they may find the format hard to follow. It would be best to teach this novel by having students actually read it aloud and act it out, so that they have concrete movements to convey what is at times rather abstract prose. While there is no cussing, mature content makes this a better pick for ages 14 and up.
    • 5/5
      Street Love is a novel-in-verse and at first I felt completely lost trying to read this format. However, after about 20 pages, I got the hang of it and I really enjoyed the format. I do not know much about poetry, but I appreciate that authors can inspire young and old to read and write forms of poetry. This telling of inner-city living and young teens is brilliantly written.
    • 5/5
      Two star crossed lovers come together in the streets of Harlem. Damien is upwardly mobile and has been admitted to Brown University. Junice's mother has just been sent to prison for 25 years. Can these two seemingly opposite souls resist external pressures and find peace in one another?
    • 4/5
      This book was about a guy and a girl falling in love. There were some parts of this book I didn't get but I got them sooner or later. It goes through times she and her boyfriend have difficult times with each other. Their names were Damien and Junice. They come from two totally different worlds but they still find a way to love each other. This is a really great love story.
    • 5/5
      Walter Dean Myers' Sweet Love received the ALA's Best YA Book Award for 2007, and rightly so. His tale of young romance in the big city and lyrical prose style is of such exceptional quality, it should be required reading on a unit of poetry. After reading his book, the poetry of Shakespeare will take on a whole new meaning. It took a while to adapt to the hip hop, street languages verse, until, chapter after chapter, Myers alliterations and cadenced pairing become music to the ear. The fluid combination of prose and poetry thrives on teens issues of inner city violence and territory, the continual degradation of young black women, and protective black mothers who want their bright sons to succeed. All of these issues weigh heavy on the shoulders and hearts of the two teenagers, Damien and Junice and their friends and families. Each short chapter has a multivoiced perspective of how these issues are dealt with by the characters. This approach allows the reader to see the strengths and weaknesses of these young people, and how they cope with the struggles of life in the inner city and forbidden love. Myers created an ending that could lead to a sequel: an ending where Damien makes a decision based more on his emotional immaturity and heartstrings than as the rationale goal oriented youth he was before meeting Junice. Maybe there is more in store for their lives in the music capital of the south?
    • 5/5
      I loved Street Love; let me count the ways:Its pentameter of the street raps ShakespeareanIts characters who are drawn with richness and complexityIts plot which keeps you guessing and turning the pagesIts writing’s preciseness and sparityIts terrible beauty in evoking the diversity of life in the “ghetto”This book paired with Romeo and Juliet would make an excellent teaching unit ; the possibilities for comparative analysis are almost countless, and it would really open students’ eyes to the timelessness of Shakespeare despite his challenging prose.
    • 3/5
      Junice and Damien come from two very different families. Neither family wants them to be together, but as they spend time together they quickly fall in love. When Junice is taken into state custody she and Damien decide to run away together so they can aways be together. This Harlem Romeo and Juliet story is told in poetry from several different points of view.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful, heart-wrenching...I LOVE this book! It's a modern Romeo and Juliet (with a happier ending) set in Harlem and testifies to the strength of certain youth in difficult situations.