Walter Dean Myers Summary

The summer after Paul’s father is killed in a heist, he works at a soup kitchen in harlem. He listens to lessons from an elderly man named Elijah and gives advice to a seventeen year old mother named Keisha who wants to go to college on a basketball scholarship. In this book review you will read about the author, the main ideas of the book , and my personal view on the book. Paul is struggling because his father, who has had problems with alcohol abuse has been shot in a store robbery gone wrong. His single mother is surprisingly hardworking and holds him to very high expectations. Elijah teaches Paul not only about soup but about the "social contract" and how it should motivate everyone, even in their neighborhood, to do what is right. As

In his books and novels he gives the characters realistic problems and tells their story of how they deal with it. In his other famous writings he speaks about black urban experience. He incorporates positive and negative characters into his

He was a smart kid but it didn't show in his school work, he was more of a fighter , if he was being teased he would settle it with his fist and not his mind. It wasn't until he found his voice in writing for him to actually take school seriously. At a very young age his mother read to him and he started to vision other worlds beyond his surroundings. High school is where he figured out he wanted to be an author. At age 17 he joined the army but he would also keep his writing dream alive. At night he wrote short stories and columns for men’s magazines. After the army he was barely surviving , and he didn't know what to do next. He says James Baldwin inspired him to write after reading one of his short stories telling about his life and being African American. He therefore decided to write about his own struggles when growing up and being a troubled boy. He tells about how he came out of the dismayed lifestyle and made it through. He once said , “I write books for the troubled boy I once was, and for the boy who lives within me still. It’s what I do.” This quote says a lot about his character and what he wants for other young men. He not only writes books but he writes them for a