Customer Reviews

Street Love

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Have you ever been in love with someone who was totally wrong for you? (It's a rhetorical question, don't think too hard on it.) If you've never experienced the uncertainty that comes with the territory, Walter Dean Myers' new book, Street Love will school you on the do's and don'ts of these emotional waters.

Written entirely in free verse poetics, Street Love is the story of Damien, a 17 year old basketball star who excels in school and seems to have a bright and shining future on the horizon. Enter Junice. Junice is a 16 year old woman trying desperately to keep her life together. While her mother serves out a 25 year sentence for selling drugs, Junice must do everything she can to protect and support herself and her younger sister, Melissa. Living a life of borderline desperation and urgency, Junice certainly has no time for boys. Enter Damien.

Who wants to read a book written as poems? Trust me, you do. This isn't the flowery romanticism of long dead authors (although you would do well to pick them up, too). This lyrical onslaught has a tempo all its own. It is the harmonizing of lovestruck characters set to the rhythm of the street and it's groovy.

Walter Dean Myers has created a captivating tale of new love on the tough streets of New York City. Damien is a smart young man who is going places. He has already been accepted into Brown University and looks toward the future. His parents have sacrificed in order to provide him with a stable, loving, and supportive environment. His mother is diligent when it comes to his life. She doesn't want to him to fall prey to manipulating girls looking for a way out of their meaningless and disappointing lives.

Junice is a tall, beautiful girl with a lot on her plate. Her mother has just been sent to prison for twenty-five years for drug possession and now lives with her forgetful grandmother and younger sister. The responsibility of keeping everyone together falls on Junice. The Department of Human Services has reviewed their situation and found that the grandmother isn't well enough to care for the girls and plans to send them into the system--saying they'll try to keep Junice and her sister, Melissa, together, but that they can't promise anything.

When Damien sees Junice walking down the street one day he becomes entranced. Feelings swell in his chest and he knows he has changed. He is quickly pulled into the chaos that is Junice's life and wants to do whatever he can to help her. Against the wishes of his parents, he continues a relationship with her that takes him down a road -- quite literally -- that he would never have taken if Junice hadn't come into his life.

Walter Dean Myers' use of a hip-hop style combined with the short poems that tie this story together is addictive. The multi-voiced narration gives the reader the perspectives of all of the characters that are involved in this heartbreaking tale. Once you start reading, you'll want to keep going until you find out how Junice and Damien's story ends -- or, we hope, at least the first chapter of a longer story.

Reviewed by: Karin Perry

Street Love is an outstanding book for any student to read. Though this book is based on the inner city life and love, I feel any child would benefit from reading this book. Actually, if I were an English teacher, I would have students read and study this book after reading Shakespeare. Students would have an easier time breaking down the poetry and symbols in this book over Shakespeare and really enjoy it more. It could almost be seen as a reward reading for doing Shakespeare. I think we have finally found Shakespeare from an African American/Urban/Hip Hop point of view. Below, are the focus groups I would recommend to read this book:
- Any student(Though this book may focus on African American life, this book was written for everyone to explore the inner-city African American culture.)
-Inner-city teens
-Students reading/studying Shakespeare
-Basketball playing teens
-Teens who parents and/or family members have recently been locked up in jail or prison.
-Teens in a foster home situation
-Teens who like/love poetry
-Home-schooled students
-Anybody!(An adult, just like me.)

STREET LOVE is a love story, and a good one. Damien and Junice don't seem right for each other, but love doesn't exactly follow the rules--the two fall head over heels in love despite their differences. And they stay that way, even though there are obstacles in the way of this urban love story.

STREET LOVE is a verse novel--a tricky format to get right. Walter Dean Myers manages it sometimes, but it didn't always feel like it flowed as well as it should have. Reading this book, I felt like it had a lot of potential, but only met it part of the time. Still, the writing was good. It's a very poetic novel--not just prose broken up into shorter lines, the way a lot of verse novels seem to be. The poetry is good, but, perhaps, not always the right way to tell the story. It could have been better, but it could have been worse. It also could have been too predictable, as love stories often are. At least that was avoided. The characters are brilliant; all of them seem three-dimensional.

This is a powerfully honest story about first love, one well worth reading despite its inconsistencies.

Reviewed by Jocelyn Pearce
02/15/2007

Romeo and Juliet in Harlem. Not a chapter book but a collection of freestyle poems depicting Damien and Junice (and a few other characters). Damien and Junice are as socially mismatched as can be (he's headed for Brown University and her mother is in prison). But you will root for these two kids, and hope it turns out for them, because their commitment to overcome cultural obstacles is intense.

This book was great. I recieved it right on time and is a great read. Reccomended to anyone who loves love stories.

This book is intended for audiences 8th grade and above. The story centers on the love brewing between Junice and Damien as they deal with the harsh realities of the street in Harlem, NY. Damian is a excellent student who has been accepted to Brown University. Junice's mother is incarcerated and Junice has to adapt to several life changes. This story is written in poetry form and uses up-to-date, modern, street language. Moral of the story is that true love conquers all, whether the cost. This is a nice heart warming read with a touch of sadness. Readers will feel and remember what it was like to be a high school kid in love.

Myers is an excellent writer for young adults, as well as adults. Here he weaves a meaningful and realistic tale of love from both sides of the track, through poetry. I have loved everything I have read by Walter Dean Myers, and I hope he keeps the books coming!

Walter Dean Myers --- National Book Award Finalist, Coretta Scott King Author Honor Winner and the first Michael L. Printz Award recipient --- has climbed to even greater heights with his latest work, STREET LOVE. A fluid mixture of poetry and prose, this sweeping book is filled with such gorgeous imagery, street-talk language and beatific, soul-stirring rhythm that just one read-through will surely take readers' breath away.

A bittersweet, tell-it-like-it-is love story between two Harlem teens, STREET LOVE aims straight for the jugular and eloquently hits its mark. Sixteen-year-old Damien has risen above his gang-infested environment and is on the track for success. He gets excellent grades, he's been accepted to Brown University, and his parents want nothing more than for him to get off the streets and make them proud.

But Damien has other ideas: "My folks are laying lines on me like/They've written out the part and all/I got to do is get to a place called Start/And follow the road to fame and glory /A PhD in mucho buckology/Two point five kids and a quick apology/To the starving folks in East Ain'tGotNothingVille/While I look down from Sugar Hill and tell/Myself how phat my program is." He has his eyes set on a different kind of future, possibly one with Junice --- the unknown, quiet beauty he's seen around the neighborhood.

Junice, however, lives a disparate life than what Damien is accustomed to. Her mother is in the Bedford Hills Prison for drug possession --- a 25-year sentence. Her sister, Melissa, is too young to take care of herself, and her grandmother, Miss Ruby, can barely remember her own name. Both her grandfather and father have long been out of the picture. In a word, she is slowly being eaten alive by her past and the pasts of the downtrodden before her. "No, it is all cycle and recycle/What the great-grandmother has done/Is to rut the earth for her children/What the grandmother has done/Is to widen the furrow for her children/What the mother has done/Is to square the pit/Deepening it for the ritual to come/And here I sit, grave deep among the/Waiting worms, staking my claim/As they stake theirs."

As Damien begins wooing her, and Junice --- however fierce her trepidation --- unwittingly gives her assent, the two struggle to fight their virtually non-existent odds in order to make a worthwhile life for themselves. At the novel's close, the outcome of their future together is left open-ended, although they have both sacrificed greatly to give it their best shot. "We will make it...I plan to survive."

STREET LOVE is nothing short of extraordinary. Myers's talent for turning words on end to spin phrase after powerful phrase is truly amazing --- his alliterations and cadenced pairing will roll off the tongue, beckoning to be read aloud. The virtually insurmountable weight of repression and despair that haunts inner-city living is evident on every page of this novel, yet there is a touch of the effervescent that sets this story afloat. The hope for a better life carries the characters through and bestows this otherwise grim tale with a glimmer of much-longed-for possibility.

--- Reviewed by Alexis Burling

I have middle school students and only one girl has checked out the book and she didn't like it. I am truly surprised as Walter Dean Myers is one of our most popular authors.
I need to read the book myself to make a more accurate assessment.