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Summary: 145th Street: Short Stories
Review: In the book there are ten short stories. Each of the are different but are in the same settings with some of the same characters. The story I liked best was "Kitty and Mack." It took place at a school. Mack was a great baseball player until he go hit with a bullet and had to get his leg amputaded. At that point Kitty and Mack were going through relantionship problems. Then they worked it out fine. I thought this was a breeze to read. I didn't like all the stories in the book, but i didlike some. I recommend this book to young adults because they can relate to it better.
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Summary: The world on 145th street
Review: On a 145th street anything can happen. A grow man can have a funeral when he is still alive because he wanted to be at his own, or the cops can come racing down the street chasing someone and nobody would notice. This was just normal activity on 145th street. This book shares many short stories that keep you on your seat wanting to know what happens next. Many of the people in the stories tie into other poeple in the book. I enjoyed this book because it was writen very well and was easy to understand.
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Summary: another coup for the amazing WD Myers
Review: So much attention has been given to Christopher Paul Curtis lately, but it seems to me the prolific work of Walter Dean Myers needs a loud cheering section--so here goes. Two customer reviews, "Another Stunning Work..." and "Good Stories Spun..." give thorough synopses of this anthology. I'll add that my middle schoolers LOVED these stories when I bought the book last spring, and I plan on reading it with my seventh graders later this year too. The stories are combinations of slick, sad, silly, and serious, and therefore one story was able to hook the kids into reading another and another. One 12 year old boy in my class was so intrigued by a character named Peaches--described as "so fine"--that he paid attention to everything else we read from the book hoping she'd turn up again. And she did! Walter Dean Myers just has a keen sense of the world and his gift with words makes reading this, and any, book by him a pleasure.
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Summary: another stunning work
Review: This book of short stories reads like an interconnected novel, a snapshot of a place as well as the people who live there. Rarely is geography as integral to plot, and to the lives of the characters, in YA fiction as it is with Myers's work. 145th Street is a shining example of the short story medium; from the hurt hopelessness in "Fighter" to the slapstick humor in "The Streak," each of these stories is a jewel that joins into a perfect treasure. Authentic voices, in raging pain and in jubilation, make this one of the most uplifting books so far this year
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Summary: Ten amazing stories. One book
Review: This novel is very interesting there is always new events happening, the book never gets boring. The characters are destined to do anything to get there point across. This Harlem setting novel is unpredictable and its jaw dropping. All ten stories in the novel are amusing.In one of the stories it shows how an urban community goes through rough times, but gets through it by sticking together and trusting one another. Walter Dean Myers is an amazing writer, he knows what the readers like. The author takes his readers through 145th street and allows them to exprience events that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world.
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Summary: Good Stories Spun by an Author with a Natural Voice
Review: Walter Dean Myers' collection of short stories focuses on the inhabitants of "145th Street" in Harlem. Each story is well-crafted and geared to readers 12 and up; Delacorte Press is the children's branch of Random House Publishers. However, this volume is fine reading for adults as well as children. The stories share characters, settings, and tone. Myers does an excellent job avoiding bad language while maintaining the vernacular and rhythms of the rich characters that he portrays. Myers has a knack for giving his characters life and credibility. Myers manages to give a sense of adult versus youth dialect in leading us through the concrete realities of Harlem. Although characters are repeated in the stories, sometimes as background and others as key characters, each story stands on its own and may be read in any order without loss of continuity. In other words, the stories do not build on one another like chapters in a novel. Each of the ten stories strikes a chord in the reader and "shows" rather than just "tells" you the pressures, fears, and joys of living in the "hood." Human emotion is itself a character throughout the collection and the story lines are expertly constructed to avoid being preachy while relating theme and the moral undercurrent of the human struggle with choices that must be made every day on 145th street. I particularly enjoyed "Big Joe's Funeral" and "A Christmas Story." Big Joe is a restaurant owner and has his own particular, unique, and large view of what a funeral ought to be about. The Christmas tale delicately balances the spirit of Christmas against the desire of a policeman to separate his personal life from the harshness of the beat he walks. Every story in this collection is interesting and entertaining. As a sampler, it has whetted my appetite for more of Walter Dean Myers' books. I highly recommend this collection for young or old readers and those who simply appreciate a good story spun by an author with a natural voice.
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