Street Love

Book excerpt: This groundbreaking novel in verse from Walter Dean Myers—two-time Newbery Honor winner and five-time Coretta Scott King Award winner—is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story set in Harlem. Share this one with readers taken with books by Jason Reynolds, Nic Stone, and Elizabeth Acevedo. Whether read at home or in the classroom, and alongside the original inspiration or on its own. Street Love is sure to spark opinions and conversations. "This verse novel, in which entire poems dazzle readers with rhyme and rhythm and voice, finds Damien, a straight-A student, headed for Brown University. But he falls in love with Junice, a girl whose mother has just been incarcerated for selling drugs, and his direction could change. Readers enjoy multiple perspectives on this romance and the decision Damien makes." (Kirkus starred review) "Hip-hop fans, readers of poetry, and hopeless romantics will respond to the emotional vibrancy of this powerful work." (VOYA) Your first love is totally wrong for you. Do you follow your heart? Or do you run away? Walter Dean Myers was a New York Times bestselling author, Printz Award winner, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, two-time Newbery Honor recipient, and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Maria Russo, writing in the New York Times, called Myers "one of the greats and a champion of diversity in children’s books well before the cause got mainstream attention."