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Summary
Summary
For the very first time in his decades-long career writing for teens, acclaimed and beloved author Walter Dean Myers writes with a teen, Ross Workman.
Kevin Johnson is thirteen years old. And heading for juvie. He's a good kid, a great friend, and a star striker for his Highland, New Jersey, soccer team. His team is competing for the State Cup, and he wants to prove he has more than just star-player potential. Kevin's never been in any serious trouble . . . until the night he ends up in jail. Enter Sergeant Brown, a cop assigned to be Kevin's mentor. If Kevin and Brown can learn to trust each other, they might be able to turn things around before it's too late.
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)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-9-In an interesting joint effort, Myers teamed with high school student Workman to produce this novel about a soccer player who runs into trouble helping a friend. Veteran police sergeant Jerry Brown is asked to look into the case of a 13-year-old boy who crashed a car belonging to his friend's father. Brown takes a special interest in the case when he is informed that the boy, Kevin Johnson, is the son of an officer who was killed in the line of duty. As Brown delves more deeply, he begins to suspect that the friend's family has something to hide. He also develops a bond with Kevin, who, although angry and troubled, is basically kindhearted and well-intentioned. Workman wrote the chapters narrated by the boy, and Myers wrote those narrated by Brown. This approach works quite well in terms of narrative voice, as Myers's more polished style reflects an adult perspective, while Workman's less-refined prose seems appropriate to his character's outlook and experience. There is some exciting soccer action, and the interaction between Brown and Kevin is heartwarming, yet natural and unforced. While some may feel that the denouement falls a little flat, the novel should have wide appeal to soccer fans, aspiring writers, and boys from difficult family circumstances who are trying to figure out how to make their way in the world.-Richard Luzer, Fair Haven Union High School, VT (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Myers and teen author Workman create a story told in alternating voices between a boy in trouble and the police officer investigating his case. Workman narrates the whirl of emotions of a teenager protecting a friend, dealing with his father's death, and playing for a soccer championship. Myers successfully crafts the adult perspective of the officer digging deeper for the truth. (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The police spot a Ford Taurus with no headlights on weaving down a street, and when the officer puts his lights on, the driver of the Ford brakes, speeds up and drives into a light pole. The driver is 13-year-old Kevin Johnson, with passenger Christy McNamara, a girl his age. Officer Evans takes Christy home and Kevin to the Bedford County Juvenile Detention Center on a stolen-car rap, driving without a license, damaging city property and kidnappingserious charges that will strike readers as blown out of proportion. Indeed, the case never really is the point of the story, nor is the back story about the abuse of illegal immigrants. It's the relationship between Kevin and Sgt. Brown, the officer asked to take the case, that's central.The story is told in the alternating voices of Kevin and the sergeantwritten by veteran Myers and a 17-year-old fan he asked to write with hima narrative structure that works well for developing the two sides of the relationship, and plenty of soccer action will keep readers interested.(Fiction. 12 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
On September 3, 2007, acclaimed YA author Myers received a fan e-mail from a young New Jersey teen named Ross Workman. Two hours later, Myers extended a remarkable invitation: Okay, let's make a story. Amazingly, they did. And here's the result, the story of a 13-year-old boy named Kevin in trouble with the law. Because he is the son of a fallen policeman, the judge in the case asks a veteran police officer, Sergeant Brown, to investigate. Told in alternating chapters by the coauthors, the book features a dramatic subplot about Kevin's soccer team's participation in an important tournament. Workman is a genuine talent, writing short, declarative sentences that move the narrative forward with assurance and a page-turning tempo. Myers, of course, is a master, and it's fascinating to see him writing from the first-person perspective of an adult. The respective voices and characters play off each other as successfully as a winning, high-stakes soccer match. How about another collaboration?--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
LEAVE IT TO A SNEAKER historian to note that when Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their famous Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, they stepped up to the podium shoeless, each sprinter carrying a single Puma Suede. (The gesture was meant to symbolize black poverty.) In "Kicks: The Great American Story of Sneakers," Nicholas Smith is continually freezing such iconic moments and zooming in on the overlooked footwear. We learn that Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, the British Olympians memorialized in the 1981 movie "Chariots of Fire," were shod by Joseph William Foster, whose grandsons went on to start Reebok. And that Jesse Owens won his four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin games in a pair of track spikes courtesy of the brothers Rudolf and Adi Dassler, the future founders of Puma and Adidas, respectively. The Dassler brothers' role in Owens's triumph over the Übermenschen is, however, somewhat diminished by the fact that they also outfitted the German team and had belonged to the Nazi Party since 1933 - and sold soccer cleats called "Blitz" and "Kampf." But mostly the story of sneakers is, as Smith's subtitle suggests, an American one: of humble origins and unapologetic success, of self-expression through consumerism and association with celebrity, of a product being put on a pedestal and a brand name serving as artist's signature. The boom was fueled by a series of fitness crazes, beginning with "pedestrian fever" in the mid-19th century, when spectators filled New York City's Madison Square Garden to watch a six-day walking race; followed shortly thereafter by the vogue for croquet, the first sport to necessitate a rubber-soled shoe; "sidewalk surfing," better known as skateboarding, in the 1960s; jogging in the 1970s; aerobics in the 1980s; and "cross-training" in the 1990s. "Kicks" is filled with interesting trivia - Plimsolls are named for the horizontal stripe used to judge a ship's seaworthiness; the exposed bubble on the Nike Air Max was inspired by the Pompidou Center in Paris - but it relies too much on contemporary sources. Smith mentions in passing that Michael Eugene Thomas, the killer in the horrific 1989 case that prompted the Sports Illustrated cover story "Your Sneakers or Your Life," went on to commit a series of non-sneaker-related murders, yet presents the original media narrative at face value. He recounts the controversies surrounding the slavelike working conditions at overseas contract factories, but has little to say about the industry's environmental impact. Smith is not a "sneakerhead" himself, and "Kicks" is not for the initiate. But there is enough material on the cult of the sneaker to satisfy most curious outsiders. The modern era began in 1985: Year 1 in the sneakerhead calendar. The "Buttfaces," as Nike's executives called themselves, decided to let their roughly 120 N.B.A. sponsorships expire and bet everything on one promising rookie named Michael Jordan, based largely on a single crowd-pleasing N.C.A.A. title-winning jump shot. In a preseason game, Jordan was fined $1,000 for violating the league's dress code - a steal, publicity-wise - but the offending article was a pair of Air Ships, not Air Jordans, as Smith suggests. "If kids out there are into the new sneakers, that's cool," Mike D of the Beastie Boys is quoted as saying to MTV's "House of Style" in 1992. "We just lean toward the classic, functional design." (In this case, the "deadstock" Adidas Campus.) The group kept a "sneaker pimp" on the payroll to root around the stockrooms of sporting goods stores for such unworn relics of the old school. "You gotta find them, like records," his bandmate Ad-Rock said. "It's like a hobby." The Beasties represented the classicist strain of sneaker collecting, which had by then entered its rococo phase. The "Made in Italy" Air Jordan II, released in 1986, featured faux-lizard leather detailing and cost a "then-unheard-of" $100. Today, limitededition models like the Supreme x Nike Air Foamposite 1 retail for hundreds, and trade for thousands on the billion-dollar secondary market. Meanwhile, at Puma, the mantle of creative director has passed just last month from Rihanna to Jay-Z. Soon the finer auction houses will have credentialed experts on hand to authenticate Dunks of dubious provenance and appraise heirloom Yeezys. ? ASH CARTER is a senior editor at Esquire.