Walter Dean Myers
1) Monster
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Awesome YA Books by Black Authors
High School Project Lit Titles
Project Lit - Full List
Summer Challenge 2023: Banned & Challenged Books
High School Project Lit Titles
Project Lit - Full List
Summer Challenge 2023: Banned & Challenged Books
Description
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
4) Lockdown
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Teenage Reese, serving time at a juvenile detention facility, gets a lesson in making it through hard times from an unlikely friend with a harrowing past.
5) Game
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
If Harlem high school senior Drew Lawson is going to realize his dream of playing college, then professional, basketball, he will have to improve at being coached and being a team player, especially after a new--white--student threatens to take the scouts' attention away from him.
6) Shooter
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Written in the form of interviews, reports, and journal entries, the story of three troubled teenagers ends in a tragic school shooting.
8) Kick
Author
Language
English
Description
Told in their separate voices, thirteen-year-old soccer star Kevin and police sergeant Brown, who knew his father, try to keep Kevin out of juvenile hall after he is arrested on very serious charges.
9) The Cruisers
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Friends Zander, Kambui, LaShonda, and Bobbi, caught in the middle of a mock Civil War at DaVinci Academy, learn the true cost of freedom of speech when they use their alternative newspaper, The Cruiser, to try to make peace.
10) Dope sick
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Seeing no way out of his difficult life in Harlem, seventeen-year-old Jeremy "Lil J" Dance flees into a house after a drug deal goes awry and meets a weird man who shows different turning points in Lil J's life when he could have made better choices.
13) Juba!: a novel
Author
Language
English
Description
In Five Points, New York, in the 1840s, African American teenager William Henry "Juba" Lane works hard to achieve his dream of becoming a professional dancer but his real break comes when he is invited to perform in England. Based on the life of Master Juba; includes historical note.
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Frederick Douglass was a self-educated slave in the South who grew up to become an icon. He was a leader of the abolitionist movement, a celebrated writer, an esteemed speaker, and a social reformer, proving that, as he said, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."
15) Riot
Author
Language
English
Description
In 1863, fifteen-year-old Claire, the daughter of an Irish mother and an African father, faces ugly truths and great danger when Irish immigrants, enraged by the Civil War and a federal draft, lash out against African-Americans and wealthy "swells" of New York City.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random shooting, Paul volunteers at a Harlem soup kitchen where he listens to lessons about "the social contract" from an elderly African American man, and mentors a seventeen-year-old unwed mother who wants to make it to college on a basketball scholarship.
18) Slam!
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Sixteen-year-old "Slam" Harris is counting on his noteworthy basketball talents to get him out of the inner city and give him a chance to succeed in life, but his coach sees things differently.