Bad Boy : A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: The Rode Not Taken By The Bad Boy
Review: Bad Boys by Walter Dean Myers would receive 4 stars for reality, suspense, flare, and an on the edge of your seat story line.Bad Boys is about a young boy named Walter whose life really only revolves around his family, school, friends, and his secret love of literature. Walter has a big problem with getting into mischief. He is always sitting in the corner or having his mother?s request to come in. But, his biggest problem is that when he gets home his mother is never happy with him, and her being an abusive alcoholic sometimes she would get rough with Walter. Walter is an exceptionally bright student but with one problem, he has a speaking impairment. This impairment cannot be detected by Walter, but to everyone else it is a large distraction. Despite his speaking, Walter gets excepted to a higher grade and excepts the request. Through his new grade Walter learns the difference between being white and being black. Although Walter is black, he never knew that, that was looked at as a bad thing to most whites. Besides Walter being taunted about being black, he would also be taunted if everyone knew he loved literature and poetry.
At Walter?s new school, he begins to slowly grow up. He begins to skip school sporadically and begins to hang around a new friend. He slowly is persuaded by his family to change his ways.

Rating:
Summary: A good book for teens.
Review: The book Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers is a memoir of the author's life. Set mostly in Harlem, the book follows Myers' troublesome childhood and the challenges he faced with his family life, his adoption, and his behavior. Though a bright child, he had a quick temper and a speech problem. This got him into many bad situations and unfortunately partly led to his "downfall" in school.
In Bad Boy, I loved how the setting of the book is in Harlem, where I have visited many times. I am familiar with many of the places he "relaxed" in and feel connected to him somehow. The book is wonderfully written and shows that in the end, even a "troubled" boy can succeed. The author was adopted by Herbert and Florence Myers and many times talks about his and biological and natural families in the book. He gets the Dean in his name from his biological father and the Myers in his name from his adoptive father. The book shows the world of poverty, something that I am not acquainted with at all. It showed me that everyone does not have the things that us "middle class" kids have. All in all, he was raised in a bad situation, but turned out good in the end. In a teenager's view, parents are wrong. Period. In reality, they are only wrong sometimes, not all the time, or, just don't understand. In the end of the book on page 205, his father says, "You wrote stories when you were a boy. You're a man, now." This shows that his father didn't understand his passion for writing, and thought that writing was not "man's work".
I believe there were many small themes in the book. Bad Boy highlighted racism, teenage hood, and poverty just to name a few. As an African American teenager, I have experienced some, but not all of the things he has. I think that the main theme of the book is misunderstanding. When he spent all his time reading and writing his mother didn't understand him. When he skipped school, no one really understood him and he was sent to a social worker. Racism is product of misunderstanding. Even now, I don't understand why he skipped school, but then again, I haven't been adopted, or live in Harlem, or have a passion for reading. I have not walked in his shoes. That is one of the reasons I read this book, so that I could see what his life was like. So that I could enter an unfortunate teenager's life and realize that I am truly blessed.
All in all, this book is one of the best books I have read. I would recommend it too anyone in the hallway at school, or passers by on the sidewalk. His writings are geared toward children and teenagers, so it is a more appealing book to that group than to adults, but adults should read this too. Maybe they can venture into the life of a teenager, or a child in poverty. Maybe they can remember their childhood and how the world was so different then.
A lot can be learned from this book, but I think that the most important thing is the acceptance of ideas and others.

Rating:
Summary: Nicholas Richview Middle
Review: The story was about a boy born in a crowd of people. The boys mom died when he was 8 . years old. The boy was adopted and lived in a little town called Harlem. The boys name was Walter Dean. He was always in a fight at school in Mr. Conroys class. This caused the boy to miss so m up to write this book school that they were going to put him in a juvinele faciliy. The boy learned to stop fighting and that is how the story ends.
I liked the book because I was like the boy in a way,I was always getting in trouble. I would get my friends to rend this book because the boy had a hard life and was adopted and poor and grew up to write this book

Rating:
Summary: N8Dawgs Review on Bad Boy
Review: Walter Myers is a troubled African american growing up in Harlem in the 1960's, where mos tof his life is fighting with other boys, the other half is spent reading books and writing poetry. Through he's teenage years and through school being 12 years old and entering high school he notices that he's speech is not up to standards and gets picked on for it. He runs into a litte touble for awhile with his new friend delivers a certain package. Through books and poetry Walter Myers finds out how to be a man, what he wants to be when he gets older, and how blacks play a role in harlem society in the 1960's.

The style of the book BAD BOY by Walter Dean Myers is a very slow paced book for the first couple of chapters, so for people who like to get into a novel and get to know all of the charactors and know what goes on in thier lives you can figure it out very easy. Than it dramaticlly gets very exciting with all of the fighting happens and the characters make mistakes and pay for them. It exploits the mind of the main character and gets into what he really thinks is right and wrong in society today and in the 1960's. You must have to get into these parts to further understand the novel Bad Boy. The beginning of this book is not very exciting nore moving, the book somewhat ends in a mystery which is very clever and unique, it ends and it makes you think about what could have happend to the character and where he/she is now.

I believe in my own mind that this book is very unique in the way that it doesn't give you to much information about the characters but just enough to always keep you on your guard and guessing what happens next. THe book does have some uninteresting parts that slow your reading down and bore you a little bit, but quickly something happens to a character that gets you write back into the book so you cant put it down. The plot was very good and so was the setting of the book, I like how it takes place in a rural area like Harlem. I would deffinitly recommend this novel to any one who think there are tough or anyone who likes poetry and dramatics, and you will get a roud awakinning and not be able to put the book down.