Rating: 
Summary: Bad Boy is a Good Book
Review: Bad Boy is about Walter Dean Myers life when he was little. He got into a lot of fights and was almost sent to special school for bad people but he was actualy nice. It is a really good book. It is like a biography that is only about when he was a kid. If you like the other books Walter Dean Myers wrote you should read this book.
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: 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: Bad Boy, but good book
Review: Having written short biographies of Malcolm X and other public figures, Myers recounts his own experience growing up in Harlem in the 1940's-60's. Myers apparently missed the turmoil facing the African-American community in Harlem during the time of Malcolm X. It is a soft spoken voice with which he describes his experiences and conflicts. The author describes his high school experience in a mostly white school; his athletic ability and love of basketball which helped him be accepted to some degree; and the frustration over the conviction that he was intelligent yet not able to earn the grades he knew he should. He divided all his spare time between playing basketball, reading for pleasure and writing-he would disappear for hours into the worlds his favorite authors created and/or trying to produce poems in the style of the various poets he was reading. The beauty of this memoir is that Myers not only relates his own experience, his own frustrations, his opportunities and disadvantages, but he describes his growing love for literature, from reading pop romance novels aloud to his mother and sneaking comic books, through Nordic fairytales. Later he was introduced to higher quality literature by teachers who took an interest in him; they introduced him to Camus and de Balzac and Shakespeare, and a wide variety of other authors. Myers eventually became aware of the legacy of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and other black writers, although he did not know about them until much later. Myers' story should inspire young adults of teenage to pursue their interests, even if their friends do not understand them.
Hearing Myers' experiences related on audio brings them alive. Actor Joe Morton (who also read an excellent version of Monster on tape) gives the teenage Walter Dean Myers a voice.
Rating:
Summary: love of books; love of writing
Review: Having written short biographies of Malcolm X and other public figures, Myers recounts his own experience growing up in Harlem in the 1940's-60's. Myers apparently missed the turmoil facing the African-American community in Harlem during the time of Malcolm X. It is a soft spoken voice with which he describes his experiences and conflicts. The author describes his high school experience in a mostly white school; his athletic ability and love of basketball which helped him be accepted to some degree; and the frustration over the conviction that he was intelligent yet not able to earn the grades he knew he should. He divided all his spare time between playing basketball, reading for pleasure and writing-he would disappear for hours into the worlds his favorite authors created and/or trying to produce poems in the style of the various poets he was reading. The beauty of this memoir is that Myers not only relates his own experience, his own frustrations, his opportunities and disadvantages, but he describes his growing love for literature, from reading pop romance novels aloud to his mother and sneaking comic books, through Nordic fairytales. Later he was introduced to higher quality literature by teachers who took an interest in him; they introduced him to Camus and de Balzac and Shakespeare, and a wide variety of other authors. Myers eventually became aware of the legacy of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and other black writers, although he did not know about them until much later. Myers' story should inspire young adults of teenage to pursue their interests, even if their friends do not understand them.
Hearing Myers' experiences related on audio brings them alive. Actor Joe Morton (who also read an excellent version of Monster on tape) gives the teenage Walter Dean Myers a voice.
Rating:
Summary: GOOD BUT BORING!!!!!
Review: I ONLY SAY THIS BOOK IS GOOD, BECAUSE IT IS AN AUTOBIOGRAPY OF AN AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN WHO WAS VERY SUCCESSFUL IN LIFE. I AM ONLY 14 YEARS OLD, BUT IT IS NICE TO READ ABOUT A BLACK MAN WHO HAD GOALS AND DREAMS OF COLLEGE AND A CAREER WHEN HE WAS GROWING UP IN HARLEM IN THE 1940'S. BUT THE BOOK HAD IT'S BORING PARTS TO. I WOULD ONLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK IF YOU WANTED TO READ ABOUT GROWING UP IN HARLEM IN THE 194O'S. RATHER THAN THAT THE BOOK IS JUST BORING!!
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: I really wanted to like this book.
Review: The boy, his story, and the setting all appealed to me, but didn't keep my interest. I'd recommend skipping this book, and go to a book like SIGHTS (Vance) that tells the a powerful story of overcoming the odds, of small-town racial predjudice, entirely through it's characters' actions and dialogue. Or even to the INVISABLE MAN. That worked for me.
Rating:
Summary: A life of the troublesome
Review: The different things that happen in life is what makes life worth living, both big and small. Any event that happens in your life may change your entire life. In the book bad boy the main character, who is also the author, falls upon many events in his life time.
Back in the forties a life was chenging evryday.Ome whos plan was to be a writer. He grew up around many interestin things such as murderers,drugs,and gangs.In school he was picked on because of his speach and the color of his skin. This book makes me think of the period of time where nobody listens to anyone. I like this book because it is inspirational.
Rating:
Summary: Awsome Book
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
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