Before my dear friend Carmen introduced me to Walter Dean Myers and thus one of my son’s favorite books, The Blues of Flats Brown, my husband told me that his English teacher colleagues had assigned Monster and the kids loved it. At the time, I didn’t know Myers was the author, but it all makes sense now. Myers crafted characters through language that sounded familiar to me and places where I’m sure I had been.
I was very excited when he was named U.S. National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature from 2012-2013. I wrote a little bit about my delight in a Models Monday post titled “The Seduction of Reading.”
I’ll definitely miss what Myers would’ve written next, but he left an impressive body of works that I look forward to reading with my son.
In Reverie Blog 
I am not a kid but i like YA literature and go back to reading others that i find enjoyable from my youth. I learned of Mr. Myers only by reading his obituary. I saw a quote from the author of the author of the wildly popular “The Fault In Our Stars,” John Green, he had high praise for Mr. Myers which piqued my interest. I will be adding his books to my ever so growing reading list. Nice blog by the way. I will be coming back. I like this space. Always looking for something fresh.
I’ve recently started purchasing Myers’s works on the Vietnam war. I’m really interested in American history between 1940-1980s. I have a significant interest in MLK, which has most recently fueled my interest in the Vietnam war. I don’t have family members, nor do they have friends, who were personally touched by the war, but this war was always very interesting to me. My school friends would often speak of their fathers’ refusal to talk about the War and their service. I certainly respected their silence but it also made me think more about the people in the photographs featuring my grandfather as a soldier during WWII alongside others in service with him. The pictures are silent regarding the one thing I don’t know: did those men make it home?
Thanks again for reading my work and corresponding with me over ideas. EMM