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Summary
Summary
For a young adolescent, David Curry has a lot to contend with. He loves and fears Reuben, his troubled father. His older brother, Ty, is turning into someone David doesn't know anymore -- or trust. And his mom is struggling to hold everything together. But then David meets Mr. Moses, an elderly man who tells him that dreams are the key to understanding reality. And with Mr. Moses's gift of dreams, David begins to see the world through his father's eyes. Printz Award winner Walter Dean Myers weaves a richly layered tale of a boy's journey of self-discovery and the acceptance and compassion he learns along the way.
Author Notes
Walter Dean Myers was born on August 12, 1937 in Martinsberg, West Virginia. When he was three years old, his mother died and his father sent him to live with Herbert and Florence Dean in Harlem, New York. He began writing stories while in his teens. He dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Army at the age of 17. After completing his army service, he took a construction job and continued to write.
He entered and won a 1969 contest sponsored by the Council on Interracial Books for Children, which led to the publication of his first book, Where Does the Day Go? During his lifetime, he wrote more than 100 fiction and nonfiction books for children and young adults. His works include Fallen Angels, Bad Boy, Darius and Twig, Scorpions, Lockdown, Sunrise Over Fallujah, Invasion, Juba!, and On a Clear Day. He also collaborated with his son Christopher, an artist, on a number of picture books for young readers including We Are America: A Tribute from the Heart and Harlem, which received a Caldecott Honor Award, as well as the teen novel Autobiography of My Dead Brother.
He was the winner of the first-ever Michael L. Printz Award for Monster, the first recipient of the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults. He also won the Coretta Scott King Award for African American authors five times. He died on July 1, 2014, following a brief illness, at the age of 76.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
As in Myers's Handbook for Boys: A Novel, an older man imparts his experience and wisdom to a bright, receptive youth-in this case, 12-year-old narrator David. The author returns readers to Harlem's 145th Street, where David lives, and the book spills over with the neighborhood's sights, sounds, triumphs and challenges. David's father, whom the boy calls Reuben, has been suffering from mental instability (he was hospitalized for three months and prescribed medication, which he often refuses to take), so when David and his best friend, Loren, meet Mr. Moses Littlejohn in a nearby park, the man assumes the role of male mentor. Mr. Moses tells the boys he's more than 300 years old and that he is a dream bearer ("There are special dreams, dreams that fill up the soul, dreams that can be unfolded like wings and lift you off the ground. Those are the dreams I must bear"). At times the plot strands begin to overwhelm the novel (Reuben's sudden bouts of violence; David's brother's involvement with drugs; his mother's battle with a landlord-who happens to have hired Reuben-over a building she had worked to secure as a homeless shelter). However, the evolving relationships between David and his mother, brother and Loren perceptively reflect the hero's growing insight. And David's budding friendship with Mr. Moses subtly plants a seed of compassion in David for his father, allowing David to step in and be there for both men at crucial junctures. Myers portrays a young man who, warts and all, emerges as a knowable and admirable hero. Ages 10-up. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Twelve-year-old David's father is home from a mental hospital and trying to control his anger; David's brother may be involved with drugs; and their mother tries to keep the family together. When he meets Mr. Moses, who calls himself a dream bearer, David begins to understand his own place in the family and the outside world. A challenging yet satisfying snapshot of a life. From HORN BOOK Spring 2004, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Gr. 5-8. Growing up in Harlem, 12-year-old David manages to keep his wits about him and his heart in the right place as he copes with his father, who is depressed and sometimes violent, and his older brother, who is hanging out with a dangerous crowd. After befriending Mr. Moses, an old man who speaks of himself as a dream bearer, David begins to hear stories that reflect the African American experience over the centuries. In the end, he finds that he not only has made Mr. Moses' dreams part of himself but also has his own dreams to help him understand those around him. The portrayal of David's family, particularly his relationship with his troubled father, is sharply realized and sometimes moving, and the Kenyan immigrant family of David's friend, Sessi, introduces a fresh point of view. Narrated by David, this well-crafted novel has some original characters and insights. --Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2003 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-While shooting hoops in his Harlem neighborhood with his friend Loren, 12-year-old David Curry befriends an ancient, shamanlike gentleman named Moses Littlejohn. Claiming to be a 300-year-old dream bearer-one who harnesses and preserves human dreams-Mr. Moses slowly imparts his dreams with exciting storytelling finesse to the boys, eventually helping David cope with his abusive father and older brother's descent into gangs and drug dealing. The story admirably addresses the many facets of anger and forgiveness within the African-American community, making it potentially compelling as a politically driven children's novel. However, unlike Myers's Monster (HarperCollins, 1999) and other previous works, the seams between political agenda and storytelling become more visible, and the author's ability to intertwine plot and message loses its subtlety as lengthy emotional outbursts break the otherwise intriguing action into bits and pieces. As a result, this stop/start style will most likely distract and frustrate younger readers from grasping Myers's overall picture. Still, the book says much about the importance of forgiveness and understanding in the world today, and for that reason, librarians will want to have a copy on their shelves even though its demand won't reach the heights of Myers's classics.-Hillias J. Martin, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A mysterious stranger is hanging around David Curry's Harlem playground. Moses Littlejohn is an African-American man with white hair, a stubbly beard, baggy clothes, and a faraway look in his eyes that makes him look like the picture of the Ancient Mariner in David's school textbook. Moses says he's 303 years old and has been carrying dreams for hundreds of years, now looking for someone to pass them onto. David is not so sure about this, but he does feel there is something about this old man and his dreams that helps him make sense of his own life with a violent father who seems crazy, an older brother flirting with street life, and a mother trying to hold her family together. This quiet, subtle story works on a number of layers with several themes--dreams, visions, home, community, and manhood. Moses's dreams offer no easy solutions to David's problems, but they become part of him, add to his knowledge, strength, and understanding, and nudge him toward a renewed relationship with his father and an appreciation of the danger and the magic of Harlem. (Fiction. 10+) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Dream Bearer, The AER Chapter One "So why are you building a house up here on the roof?" "To show I can do it," Sessi said. "This is the way my ancestors in Kenya built their houses." Loren and I watched as Sessi folded strips of dried palm leaves and wove them through the sticks she had made into a four-foot wall. She did look like she knew what she was doing. "How many people can you get into one of these little houses?" Loren asked. "This is just a model, silly," Sessi said. "If I were in my country, all of my family would help build the house and it would be ten times this big." "They don't have to pay rent, right?" I asked. "If you live on somebody else's lands, then you have to pay rent," Sessi said. "If I was in your little country, I would probably be a king or something," Loren said. "At least the mayor." Sessi, on her knees, turned her head sideways and looked up at Loren. "Tarzan told you that?" "He didn't have to," Loren said. "I just know it." "I'm thinking of going to Africa when I get old enough," I said. "Just to check it out." "Me and David are American." Loren nudged me with his elbow. "But we're part African." "Who are you? Ibo? Edo?" Sessi asked. "All you guys are is American. I am Kikuyu." "Yo, David, when she finishes making her house, you want to come up here and tear it down?" Loren put one hand on the house and pushed it gently. "That's what Americans do," Sessi said, turning back to her model house. "You tear things down." "Nothing wrong with that," Loren said. Sessi made a little noise with her throat and shook her head. That was the thing with Sessiâ€"sometimes she would make little noises that sounded almost like words or move her hands in a way that was almost like talking. She was pretty, with a smile that started with her mouth and spread across her face in a way that always made me smile when I saw it. Loren was the same age as me, twelve, and lived in my building. Sessi lived in the building next to mine. When the weather wasn't too bad, we sometimes went over the rooftops to get to each other's houses. Sessi wasn't like most girls I knewâ€"she never put anybody down or got into arguments. Maybe it was because she was African, I didn't know. "We could use your model house for our clubhouse," I said to Sessi. "You know what a clubhouse is?" "I've been in this country for four years and I'm only one year younger than you are, Mr. David Curry," Sessi said. When she stood up she was an inch taller than me even though she was younger. "Whatever you boys know, I know." "Oh, yeah? Why did the moron throw an alarm clock out the window?" Loren asked. "Don't ask me silly things," Sessi said, rolling her eyes in Loren's general direction. "Do I look like a silly person to you?" "Because he wanted to see time fly!" Loren said. "Get it? He wanted to see time fly!" "Loren, that is so stupid!" Sessi went back to building her model house. "The only reason you're smart is because your mother makes you study and stuff," Loren said. "If me and David studied all the time, we'd be twice as smart as you. Ain't that right, David?" "I don't know," I answered. "I'd think we'd be twice as smart as anybody if we tried," Loren said. "What do you think of us using it as a clubhouse?" I asked again. "I'll have to ask my father," Sessi said. "I don't think he'll mind, but he'll have to be asked." "When are you going to ask him?" "When he gets home from work." Sessi smoothed the side of her house with the palm of her hand. "Maybe after supper." "What's your dumb brother Kimi doing?" Loren asked. "Reading to my mother," Sessi answered. "He's helping her with the citizenship test. She can read well, but it helps her to hear the words read aloud." "You know you can't become a citizen without my permission," Loren said. "Loren Hart, shut up!" Sessi spoke with finality. "I don't know anybody with a real clubhouse," I said. "You think your father's going to say we can use it?" "Tell him he'd better say yes or I might have to come to your house and deal with him!" Loren said. "You're going to deal with my father?" Sessi held up her thumb and put it on the end of Loren's nose. "I don't think so!" Loren gave her a look, but he didn't say anything and I knew he wasn't sure if he could beat Sessi or not. He had told me before that he thought Africans were tougher than they looked. "I got to go home." Loren wiped his hands on the front of his jeans. "You want to come to my house and watch television?" "I can't stay out too long," I said. "Mom's going to some kind of meeting, and she wants me home when she leaves." "David's a good boy," Sessi said. "He listens to his parents." "I think you want to marry him," Loren said. "If I go downstairs right now, I'll bet you'll be giving him a kiss before I get to the third floor." "Child," Sessi said to Loren. "You're a mere child." "I'll come over for a while," I said. "Why don't you check with your mother first?" Sessi looked up at me. "Then if you go you'll have an easy mind." Dream Bearer, The AER . Copyright © by Walter Myers . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Dream Bearer by Walter Dean Myers All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
