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Summary
Summary
Two-time Newbery Honor-winning author Myers writes about an African-American boy's struggles with his first cattle drive in 1871 and the racial prejudices of the day. Map.
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 (3)
Horn Book Review
In two books written in journal format, Myers paints a vivid picture of sixteen-year-old Joshua's experience on his first cattle drive in 1871 and creates a credible voice for young Scott, whose early excitement is quickly tempered by the carnage at Omaha Beach. Historical notes, maps, and archival photos are included at the back of each book. From HORN BOOK Fall 1999, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The teenage son of a former slave joins a cattle drive from Texas to Abilene, Kansas, in an entry in the My Name is America series. Joshua is a competent, level-headed boy who works hard, loves his mother, and keeps God in his heart. Despite the bigotry of the trail boss, the Captain, Joshua is determined to prove himself on his first drive. Through encounters with rustlers and others, stampedes, crew frictions, and the multitude of difficulties and challenges inherent in the job, Joshua holds his own, proves his worth, and earns some respect from the Captain. Myers tells a compelling story in which the source of the drama is the drive itself, and all the hardship of life on the trail. Scene after scene is vividly told, including a downright gory, fatal trampling of one of the cowpunchers during a stampede. Readers gain a real feeling for the period and setting, and a strong sense of what a cattle drive entailed. The hallmarks of Myers's work--thorough research and solid writing--are evident here. (b&w photos, maps) (Fiction. 8-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 4-6. For this entry in My Name Is America, a companion series to the popular Dear America books, Myers sends a young African American cowboy north on the Chisholm Trail in 1871. It's a dream come true for Joshua when he's hired to help drive 2,200 "beeves" from a Texas ranch to Abilene, Kansas; by the time the journey's over, he not only has faced up to rustlers, stampedes, and Indians but also has met buffalo soldiers and Wild Bill Hickock, all while earning the grudging respect of his hard-bitten, prejudiced trail boss. Although written in dated daily episodes, Joshua's narrative is too smooth for a credible diary; he does have a voice of his own, though, and imparts a clear, reasonably specific picture of a cowboy's work and how hard, dirty, and exhausting it was: "May 25. I sat down to write two days in a row, and just fell asleep." Two historical notes (one fictional) and a generous suite of contemporary pictures add verisimilitude--or, along with the absence of Myers' name on the cover, misdirection for unwary readers--to this informative, expert peek behind the cowboy mythos. (Reviewed February 15, 1999)0590026917John Peters
