The Beast [Hardcover]

Walter Dean Myers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

One of today's premier novelists brings his fiction back to Scholastic Press with a powerful and haunting love story.

17-yr-old Anthony "Spoon" Witherspoon is returning to Harlem after seven months at an exclusive prep school. It's with mixed feelings that he's left New York City in the first place to finish high school in the hallowed halls of the mostly white, very preppy New England school -- but now that Spoon is back home, he realizes how much he's come to like his prep-school life and new friends. He's missed his girlfriend, though, and is shocked to discover upon his return that the bright young poet she was when he left has become a drug addict.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up-Anthony "Spoon" Witherspoon, 17, leaves Harlem, and his girl, Gabi, to spend his senior year at Wallingford Academy in Connecticut, with the hope that he will get into an Ivy League college. While he adjusts to prep-school life and navigates the racial and social divides of the haves and the want-to-haves, Gabi's life comes undone. Her mother is dying, her younger brother may be running with a gang, and her blind grandfather has come to stay. When Spoon comes home for Christmas, Gabi is different. She's thinner, certainly, and so is her spirit. Spoon discovers a needle in her room and "the beast," heroin, is uncovered. Gabi-a clear-eyed, sassy Dominicana who writes poetry and dreams of attending Columbia-explains that she has lost the road that once ran through her life to her future. Most of the first-person narrative takes place during the holiday break in Harlem, and Myers's descriptions of the streets and people-the bright, clean, working-class hope and the slate-gray bankruptcy of drugs and crime-are photographically authentic and dizzyingly musical. Spoon's observations are philosophical and precocious, but the story races along at the pace of his anxieties-about a future, with or without Gabi, and about his place in Harlem and in the world. The language is simple and clean; the plot unfolds seamlessly; and the characters emerge shaky, worldly wise, and cautiously optimistic.
Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 9-12. High-school senior Spoon hopes to marry his girlfriend, Gabi, an aspiring poet with "a smile that pleases the angels," and he hates to leave her for a year to attend a Connecticut prep school. During the fall, Gabi's letters become infrequent, and when Spoon returns home for the holidays, he's heartbroken to discover that she has begun to use "the beast": drugs. In his latest novel, Myers tells a powerful story of first love and the profound ways that drugs touch everyone: "If Gabi could lose her way, so could I." Spoon narrates in a voice that's artistic and colloquial, his thoughts tumbling out as poetry, and readers may miss the precise sense of some passages. But Myers captures the disorientation of living between worlds, where home is "the same, but not the same," and Spoon's sharp observations about race and love will resonate deeply with teens, as will his ambivalence about the future: "I don't know. I'm not even sure what there is to know." Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic Press; 1 edition (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0439368413
• ISBN-13: 978-0439368414
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,122,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Walter Dean Myers is a New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author who has garnered much respect and admiration for his fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for young people. Winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award, he is considered one of the preeminent writers for children. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, with his family.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Story But It's Too Short, June 29, 2004

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Beast (Hardcover)

"The Beast", along with "Monster" and "Scorpions" is another masterwork of Walter Dean Myers, one of the greatest writers of our time. The story is about a college freshman who leaves his home in the projects of Harlem and his poet/girlfriend Gabi, for college. When he returns to Harlem for Christmas break he finds everything different, especially Gabi who is thinner and doesn't talk much anymore. Spoon(the college kid) discovers that Gabi's using drugs and the book has to do with the battle to get his girlfriend away from the beast.

This book is amazing. There are unique characters like Gabi's grandfather and Gabi's little brother who runs with gangs.
The one thing I would've liked is if it would've given more detail to Gabi and her brother getting cleaned. Myers kind've skips through really fast so you don't really see the emotion of quitting drugs.

But this is still an amazing book for all readers. I recommend you read all his books and then read some of Donald Goines novels if you're ready for them.

"The Beast"= A+

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Returning To These Mean Streets, April 12, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Beast (Hardcover)

Book Review
Title: The Beast Author: Walter D. Myers
ISBN: 0-06-440731-4

Returning To These Mean Streets
Have you ever went away and then came back to a place that you know so well but are so confused about it all? Or had someone that you were really close to do the most self destructive thing? When I first wanted to read this book it was right after my teacher Mrs. Lyons gave her book talk about it. When she read some parts from it I automatically fell in love with it.
This book is about a guy named Anthony Spoon who went away to boarding school and came back to Harlem, a place that he was raised that wasn't so bad when he left but was so chaotic when he returned. He comes home from school to be a mentor and to be confused about the relationship between him and his girlfriend Gabi. Gabi was a nice poet who Anthony fell in love with before he left to school. He thought she had it all. Brains, beauty, and street smarts. But just like most people she got sucked into the game of life and got rapped up in the mean streets.
I think that this book was a spectacular book. It talked about the real things that go on in life and that's the kind of books that I like to read. Although I didn't quite agree with choices that Anthony made it was still a great joy to read this. I feel that if Anthony would stay with someone it should be Chanelle (another character in the book that he tends to lust about). I also don't feel that the ending of the book fit the criteria of the book. I thought that it would be a real eye opener or a great cliff hanger.
Some things to know about the author Walter Dean Myers are: he was the first winner of the Michael L. Printz Award, a National Book Award, has written a lot of books about teen struggles, and helped establish the Walter Dean Myers publishing institute.
The theme in this book is that "EVEN THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE TO THE MOST DISRTUCTIVE THINGS." Since the characters in this book do the most destructive things I felt that this theme fit the story best.
A quote from the book that I really found interesting was the quote that is on the back of the book. "It was funny. I had been away for only a few months from the place I had spent almost all my life. And suddenly it was ahead of me, like a shadow on the cracked concrete sidewalk mimicking my every move.
During reading this book I made a lot of connnections. One connection that I made was a prediction. I predicted that Anthony would break up with Gabi. I also made a t-s connection. I connected to the part where Anthony had said that he gets butterflies in his stomach when he gets around Gabi. I can realte to this because when I really liked someone I always got butterflies in my stomach whenever I got around this boy.
I recommend this book to any teen ager that loves an interesting book about real-life happenings and things that really can be true and love to read about their surroundings and the effects that it could have on someone's life.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Realistic, August 9, 2004

By 

annmmar "ASMB" (Bronx, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Beast (Hardcover)

The Beast describes the use of heroin. Anthony "Spoon" Witherspoon has gone away to prep school in his senior year of high school. He left behind not only his family but the woman he loves Gabi(short for Gabriela).When he returns homes for christmas he realizes things are not the same. One of his friends drop out from school and the neighborhood good girl Clara is preganant. Anthony starts to wonder about his neighborhood and feeling strange being in Harlem again. The most devasting change in his life is when he finds out the woman he loves uses(heroin). Anthony is heartbroken but tries his best to be there for her.Walter Dean Myers do give a vivid imagery of Harlem and its people but I do not like how he ends the book. I would have like to know some more about Gabi if she stayed clean and what happen to her relationship with Anthony.