Born:
  West Virginia,
United States Of America

Current Home:
Jersey City, New Jersey,
United States Of America

Walter Dean Myers

Biography

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The New York Times bestseller Walter Dean Myers is the critically acclaimed author of more than 85 books for children and young adults.  His award-winning body of work includes Sunrise Over Fallujah, Fallen Angels, Monster, Somewhere in the Darkness, Slam!, Jazz, and Harlem, amongst many more.  He has received two Newbery Honors and five Coretta Scott King Awards.  He is the winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award as well as the first recipient of Kent State University's Virginia Hamilton Literary Award. In 2008, he won the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture Award.

Walter began writing at an early age. "I was a good student, but a speech impediment was causing problems.  "One of my teachers decided that I couldn't pronounce certain words at all. She thought that if I wrote something, I would use words I could pronounce. I began writing little poems. I began to write short stories, too."

Realizing that his family would not be able to afford college, Walter joined the Army on his seventeenth birthday. When he got out, he worked various jobs and he wrote at night. "I wrote for magazines," say Walter. "I wrote adventure stuff, I wrote for the National Enquirer, I wrote advertising copy for cemeteries."  A winning contest entry with the Council on Interracial Books for Children became his first book, Where Does the Day Go?

Walter's latest title, Amiri and Odette: A Love Story, is a modern retelling of Swan Lake. "I had seen the ballet of Swan Lake as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played.  This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years.  As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years- until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament."

"In listening to Pyotr Tchaikovsky's score," Walter continues,  "I found the violence muted, but slowly, in my head, the sometimes jarring rhythms of modern jazz and hip-hop began to intervene.  I asked myself if there were modern dangers to young people similar to the magic spells of folklore.  The answer of course, was a resounding yes, and I began to craft a modern, urban retelling of the Swan Lake ballet." 

"I so love writing," says Walter.  It is not something that I am doing just for a living, this is something that I love to do.  When I work, what I'll do is outline the story first.  That forces me to do the thinking.  I cut out pictures of all my characters and my wife puts them into a collage, which goes on the wall above the computer.  When I walk into that room, I see the characters, and I just get very close to them.  I rush through a first draft, and then I go back and rewrite, because I can usually see what the problems are going to be ahead of me.  Rewriting is a lot more fun for me than the writing is."

Walter Dean Myers lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Learn more about Walter Dean Myers at www.walterdeanmyers.net.

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  Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers Scholastic Summer Challenge Book Pick. Operation Iraqi Freedom, that's the code name. But the young men and women in the military's Civil Affairs Battalion have a simpler name for it: WAR. In this new novel, Walter Dean Myers looks at a contemporary war with the same power and searing insight he brought to the Vietnam war of his classic, "Fallen Angels". He creates memorable characters like the book's narrator, Birdy, a young recruit from Harlem who's questioning why he even enlisted; Marla, a blond, tough-talking, wisecracking gunner; Jonesy, a guitar-playing bluesman who just wants to make it back to Georgia and open a club; and a whole unit of other young men and women and drops them incountry in Iraq, where they are supposed to help secure and stabilize Iraq and successfully interact with the Iraqi people. The young civil affairs soldiers soon find their definition of "winning" ever more elusive and their good intentions being replaced by terms like "survival" and "despair. " Caught in the crossfire, Myers' richly rendered characters are just beginning to understand the meaning of war in this powerful, realistic novel of our times. Learn more about Walter Dean Myers. $17.99 books;hardcover books;hardcovers | Ages 12 and Up

  
  Sunrise Over Fallujah
  Ages 12 and Up $17.99
  
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  	Smiffy Blue: The Case of the Missing Ruby and Other Stories by Walter Dean Myers and David J.A. Sims Meet Smiffy Blue, ace crime detective of Doober City. With his sidekick, Jeremy Joe and his faithful dog named Dog, Smiffy Blue sniffs out clues that lead him all around town in search of crooks. $3.99 Paperback Book | Grades 1-4

  
  Smiffy Blue: The Case of the Missing Ruby and Other Stories
  Grades 1-4 $3.99