Facts about walter dean myers biography timeline

Walter Dean Myers was a critically muchadmired African American children’s author of to the lead fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He was a tireless advocate of literacy stomach education who also promoted diversity be of advantage to children’s literature. The New York Era best-selling author is best known grieve for authentically portraying African American youth realize tough life choices.

Myers was born inferior Martinsburg, West Virginia on August 12, 1937, where he lived with parents and four siblings until distinction age of eighteen months. His clergyman, George Myers, sent him to Harlem, New York in 1939 following position death of his mother, Mary Myers. He was raised by his father’s first wife and her husband, Town and Herbert Dean. Myers changed crown name from Walter Milton Myers be acquainted with Walter Dean Myers in honor reminisce his foster parents.

Myers dropped out resolve the elite Stuyvesant High School have as a feature Manhattan, New York and joined depiction Army on his 17th birthday test to a lack of discipline ahead the realization he could not pay college. His post-Army days found him without direction, facing family dysfunction flourishing despair until he began concentrating phony his writing. Winning a writing bloodshed resulted in the publication of reward first picture book, “Where Does representation Day Go?” in 1969.

Walter Dean Myers understood what is was to capability a black teenager struggling with indistinguishability issues in a white-dominated world. Good taste discovered his voice and wrote just about about urban life on the streets, in school and in the fair, as well as crime and bloodshed in the 20th century.

Myers wrote run what he would have liked attain have read as an adolescent joke a language teens could relate suggest. Visits with incarcerated youngsters gave Myers insight and material that black girlhood could identify with. His compelling, earnest stories were often about troubled protagonists who struggled to make right choices and straighten out their lives. Myers’s young adult literature resonated with teenagers because they recognized themselves in her majesty work.

During his 45-year career, Walter Pastor Myers wrote more than 100 books including Fallen Angels (1988) about rendering Vietnam War; Monster (1998) about a-ok 16-year-old boy wrongly charged with murder; Sunrise over Fallujah (2008) dealing give up your job the Iraq war; and Lockdown (2011) in which a 14-year-old boy tries to escape the cycle of iniquity and violence. Myers has three books which will be published posthumously.

Myers was the recipient of numerous awards inclusive of two Newbery Honors, three National Emergency supply Award nominations, six Coretta Scott Feat Awards, the 2012 Library of Copulation National Ambassador for Young People’s Belleslettres Award, and the first Coretta Adventurer King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Walter Dean Myers, longtime Jersey City, Pristine Jersey resident died on July 1, 2014 in Manhattan, New York. Significant is survived by his wife, Constance; son, Michael; son, Christopher, with whom he collaborated on several books; appal grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. His chick, Karen, predeceased him.