Paperback ©2005 | -- |
Gangs. Fiction.
Friendship. Fiction.
Drive-by shootings. Fiction.
African Americans. Fiction.
Funerals for young black men, both murdered in drive-by shootings, begin and end Myers' sobering story about contemporary Harlem teens. Fifteen-year-old Jessie has always seen slightly older Rise as a hero, and the boys made a blood-brother bond as children. Then Rise pulls away, starts dealing drugs and "fronting cool," and Jessie struggles to find his old friend beneath the new persona. His search leads him to art, which is his great talent, and he begins to create a biography of Rise in pictures. Frequent and striking black-and-white illustrations, done by Christopher Myers, depict pivotal moments from the boys' youth; there are also comics-style panels, in which a bird-boy character asks how best to live and communicate truthfully. The plot, which drifts a bit, isn't the focus here. What will affect readers most is Jessie's sharp, sometimes poetic first-person voice and the spirited, rhythmic dialogue of other vivid characters, who ask piercing questions about how to survive the violence and hopelessness rooted through a neighborhood's generations.
Horn BookIn the aftermath of the latest murder in his Harlem neighborhood, fifteen-year-old artist Jesse chronicles his best friend Rise's growing involvement with gangs and drug-dealing while trying to sort out his own future. The involving but purposive text is interspersed with starkly emotional comic-style ink sketches.
Kirkus ReviewsJesse and his friend C.J. are trying to come to terms with "the violence that blows through our community like the winds of winter." With a friend carrying a gun, another dealing and one in jail for robbery, Jesse sees first-hand what drugs are doing to his Harlem home. "Sometimes," he says, "the corner of 149th Street looked like an ad for some desperate Third World country," or a vision of hell from Dante's Inferno , which Jesse is reading in school. The autobiography Jesse is making of his best friend Rise, with photographs, drawings and cartoons, shows Rise changing as he gets involved with gangs, and the cartoonish character of Spodi Roti represents Jesse himself as he questions his life and community, looking for answers. The innovative illustrated novel format is effective, essential to Rise's autobiography and to Jesse's own quest for understanding. Though the story is starkly realistic, there is always hope in the gifts of Jesse the artist and C. J. the musician, of schools and churches and of caring parents. (Fiction. 12+)
School Library JournalGr 8 Up-Fifteen-year-old Jesse lives a clean and relatively careful life in contemporary Harlem. His best friend and honorary brother, Rise, is two years older and plays life faster and looser. The boys belong to a social club inherited from the men of the older generation. The Counts aren't a gang and the members tend to have a variety of aesthetic interests. Jesse is devoted to cartooning and sketching while C. J. is a fine musician. Rise, however, it seems to Jesse, has begun to lead a second life that doesn't include him or The Counts. Myers's story of urban violence and wasted youth unfolds inexorably, but the relationships among his characters-Jesse and his frightened parents; C. J. and Jesse; a local cop and the neighborhood boys; Jesse and a love-starved but sexually knowing girl-are nuanced and engaging rather than predictable. The black-and-white artwork throughout includes both realistic sketches of Jesse's friends and a cartoon-strip take on Rise, adding a dimension that expands readers' views of Jesse's world and of the conflicts presented to the boys. This novel is like photorealism; it paints a vivid and genuine portrait of life that will have a palpable effect on its readers.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Voice of Youth AdvocatesAs in his 1989 Newbery Honor title Scorpions (Harper, 1988/VOYA August 1988), Myers explores the seduction of youth into gangs. The book starts and ends with a funeral. In between is the story of Jesse, a young African American teen growing up in a Harlem where gangs are a way of life. While Jesse avoids the gangs, his best friend/blood brother Rise does not. Powerful words only tell part of the tale as Myers teams with his son Christopher to illustrate the text. Jesse is a comic artist, and throughout the text, Christopher's stark black-and-white drawings illustrate people and places, including a shocking image of a young man in a coffin that opens the book. There is also a Calvin and Hobbes-like comic strip called Spodi Roti and Wise, which Myers uses to score political points. It is not a perfect book: Some of the slang is dated according to a teen from a correctional facility who read the book, and Jesse sometimes just seems too good, but those flaws are minor. There is a sweet-and-sour subplot of Jesse and his girlfriend plus some comic family interaction to shed light on this dark tale. Although this slice of street life might not satisfy teens reading the new generation of gritty books such as Teri Woods's True to the Game (Teri Woods Publishing, 1999), this cautionary tale packs a punch, even though it pulls a few punches in terms of language to find a home in school and public libraries.-Patrick Jones.
ALA Booklist (Wed Jun 01 00:00:00 CDT 2005)
ALA/YALSA Best Book For Young Adults
Horn Book
Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal
Voice of Youth Advocates
Wilson's High School Catalog
Wilson's Junior High Catalog
Chapter One
Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
Lord, I am so tired
Yes, I'm weak
And yes, I'm worn . . .
Lord knows we are tired today as we gather here in fellowship and sorrow, in brotherhood and despair, for the going-home ceremony of fourteen-year-old Bobby Green." Pastor Loving rocked forward as he spoke. "Lord knows we are tired of burying our young men, of driving behind hearses and seeing the painted letters of remembrance on the walls of our neighborhoods.
"As we close this chapter of young Bobby's life, let us send our prayers with him to the other side." Pastor Loving, a big, dark man, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. "Let us send our prayers with him so that maybe one day those left behind will finally be able to do what we hope for him—to rest in peace without the violence that blows through our community like the winds of winter. This loss chills the heart and challenges the soul, and yet we must keep on. To young Bobby's parents I extend my hand and the promise of a just God who will heal the heavy heart and rest the weary soul. As you leave the church today, stop and pass a word to Bobby's grieving mother, Louise, and his grieving father, John. Let them know that in the middle of darkness there is and will always be the everlasting light of Christian faith. Amen."
The gospel choir started singing softly, and row by row they left their seats. Bobby's mother was crying and leaning against an older man I didn't know. It was all the same, the gentle whirring of the fans, the familiar scent of the flowers, the hymns that filled the spaces between the people mourning Bobby. I looked over to where C.J. was still sitting at the organ. He looked small in front of the dark mahogany instrument. The people in the first row had started filing past the casket. My mom took my hand and squeezed it.
"I don't think . . ."
"It's okay," she said softly.
I slid out of the pew and made my way toward the back of St. Philip's Episcopal.
On the steps the cool evening breeze carried barbecue smells from the Avenue. I watched as some young kids ran down the street to an ice-cream truck. It had been hot all day, and the few drops of rain that fell didn't cool things off at all.
"It's a shame for a child to go so young like that," Miss Essie Lassiter was saying. "It should have been somebody old, like me. Jesse, do the police have any idea who it was who shot him?"
"No, ma'am."
"That's the terrible thing about it," Miss Lassiter said. "First there's one shooting, and then there's a shooting getting even with that one, and people don't know when to stop."
"Yes, ma'am."
Bobby had a big family and they could afford only one official funeral car, so not too many people were going out to the cemetery. I watched as Miss Lassiter, who went to everybody's funeral, got in one of the cars. A moment later they were pulling away from the church.
C.J. came up to me and he was looking teary-eyed. "You want to go over to the park?" he asked.
I said I'd go, and just then Rise came over. We told him where we were going and he said he'd come along. We walked the first part of the distance to the park in silence, and then Rise started kidding C.J. about not playing any jazz at Bobby G.'s funeral.
"You should have played like they used to down in New Orleans," Rise said. "Everybody would have talked about it."
"And my moms would have been all over my head," C.J. said. "I asked her about playing some jazz, but she said that Bobby's parents might not like it."
"Yeah, well, he went out like a man," Rise said.
"Yo, Rise, the brother got wasted in a drive-by," I said. "He was chilling on his stoop when some dudes lit up the sidewalk. I don't even think they knew who they shot."
We got to the park and sat on a bench. C.J. was talking about how Bobby was worried about getting into a good high school.
"We were just talking about that the other day," C.J. said. "He was saying that if he got into a good high school, he was going to bust his chops so he could go on to college. Bobby was cool."
"When your time comes, you got to go," Rise said. "That's all sad and everything, but that's the word, straight up."
"Maybe I should have played something special," C.J. said.
C.J. is the same age as me, fifteen. He was raised in the church and had been playing piano and organ for as long as I knew him. He wanted to play jazz, but his moms said he should stick to classical and gospel. We had talked about him sticking in a little jazz at Bobby's funeral, and I thought it would have been cool. I really didn't know Bobby's parents, though. Maybe they wouldn't have liked it. But there were so many funerals going on, it almost seemed you needed something to make them different.
"Y'all hear there's going to be a meeting of the Counts tomorrow?" Rise asked."For what?" C.J. had fished half of a candy bar from his pocket and was taking the paper off of it.
"It should be about Bobby G.," Rise said. "But Calvin is calling it, so I don't think it's going to be about anything, really. Dude is just swimming upstream and don't know where he's going."
On the far side of the park some guys had set up steel drums. They started playing some reggae, but real soft and it sounded good, almost like a pulse coming out of the darkness.
"You know, it's hard when somebody gets wasted," Rise went on. "Bobby G. was good people and everything, but that's why you have to make your life special every day. You never know when your time is up. Ain't no use in being down about it."
Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
Lord, I am so tired
Yes, I'm weak
And yes, I'm worn . . .
Lord knows we are tired today as we gather here in fellowship and sorrow, in brotherhood and despair, for the going-home ceremony of fourteen-year-old Bobby Green." Pastor Loving rocked forward as he spoke. "Lord knows we are tired of burying our young men, of driving behind hearses and seeing the painted letters of remembrance on the walls of our neighborhoods.
"As we close this chapter of young Bobby's life, let us send our prayers with him to the other side." Pastor Loving, a big, dark man, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. "Let us send our prayers with him so that maybe one day those left behind will finally be able to do what we hope for him—to rest in peace without the violence that blows through our community like the winds of winter. This loss chills the heart and challenges the soul, and yet we must keep on. To young Bobby's parents I extend my hand and the promise of a just God who will heal the heavy heart and rest the weary soul. As you leave the church today, stop and pass a word to Bobby's grieving mother, Louise, and his grieving father, John. Let them know that in the middle of darkness there is and will always be the everlasting light of Christian faith. Amen."
The gospel choir started singing softly, and row by row they left their seats. Bobby's mother was crying and leaning against an older man I didn't know. It was all the same, the gentle whirring of the fans, the familiar scent of the flowers, the hymns that filled the spaces between the people mourning Bobby. I looked over to where C.J. was still sitting at the organ. He looked small in front of the dark mahogany instrument. The people in the first row had started filing past the casket. My mom took my hand and squeezed it.
"I don't think . . ."
"It's okay," she said softly.
I slid out of the pew and made my way toward the back of St. Philip's Episcopal.
On the steps the cool evening breeze carried barbecue smells from the Avenue. I watched as some young kids ran down the street to an ice-cream truck. It had been hot all day, and the few drops of rain that fell didn't cool things off at all.
"It's a shame for a child to go so young like that," Miss Essie Lassiter was saying. "It should have been somebody old, like me. Jesse, do the police have any idea who it was who shot him?"
"No, ma'am."
"That's the terrible thing about it," Miss Lassiter said. "First there's one shooting, and then there's a shooting getting even with that one, and people don't know when to stop."
"Yes, ma'am."
Bobby had a big family and they could afford only one official funeral car, so not too many people were going out to the cemetery. I watched as Miss Lassiter, who went to everybody's funeral, got in one of the cars. A moment later they were pulling away from the church.
C.J. came up to me and he was looking teary-eyed. "You want to go over to the park?" he asked.
I said I'd go, and just then Rise came over. We told him where we were going and he said he'd come along. We walked the first part of the distance to the park in silence, and then Rise started kidding C.J. about not playing any jazz at Bobby G.'s funeral.
"You should have played like they used to down in New Orleans," Rise said. "Everybody would have talked about it."
"And my moms would have been all over my head," C.J. said. "I asked her about playing some jazz, but she said that Bobby's parents might not like it."
"Yeah, well, he went out like a man," Rise said.
"Yo, Rise, the brother got wasted in a drive-by," I said. "He was chilling on his stoop when some dudes lit up the sidewalk. I don't even think they knew who they shot."
We got to the park and sat on a bench. C.J. was talking about how Bobby was worried about getting into a good high school.
"We were just talking about that the other day," C.J. said. "He was saying that if he got into a good high school, he was going to bust his chops so he could go on to college. Bobby was cool."
"When your time comes, you got to go," Rise said. "That's all sad and everything, but that's the word, straight up."
"Maybe I should have played something special," C.J. said.
C.J. is the same age as me, fifteen. He was raised in the church and had been playing piano and organ for as long as I knew him. He wanted to play jazz, but his moms said he should stick to classical and gospel. We had talked about him sticking in a little jazz at Bobby's funeral, and I thought it would have been cool. I really didn't know Bobby's parents, though. Maybe they wouldn't have liked it. But there were so many funerals going on, it almost seemed you needed something to make them different.
"Y'all hear there's going to be a meeting of the Counts tomorrow?" Rise asked."For what?" C.J. had fished half of a candy bar from his pocket and was taking the paper off of it.
"It should be about Bobby G.," Rise said. "But Calvin is calling it, so I don't think it's going to be about anything, really. Dude is just swimming upstream and don't know where he's going."
On the far side of the park some guys had set up steel drums. They started playing some reggae, but real soft and it sounded good, almost like a pulse coming out of the darkness.
"You know, it's hard when somebody gets wasted," Rise went on. "Bobby G. was good people and everything, but that's why you have to make your life special every day. You never know when your time is up. Ain't no use in being down about it."
Autobiography of My Dead Brother. Copyright © by Walter Myers. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Excerpted from Autobiography of My Dead Brother 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.
A powerful National Book Award Finalist from the acclaimed, bestselling author of Monster. "This novel is like photorealism; it paints a vivid and genuine portrait of life that will have a palpable effect on its readers." (School Library Journal starred review)
With Harlem as its backdrop, Autobiography of My Dead Brother follows the diverging paths of best friends Rise and Jesse. When Rise becomes engulfed in gang activity and starts dealing drugs, Jesse, a budding artist, tries to make sense of the complexities of friendship, loyalty, and loss in a neighborhood plagued by drive-by shootings, vicious gangs, and an indifferent juvenile justice system.
The innovative first-person storytelling, along with cartoons and photos, pulls in readers and makes Autobiography of My Dead Brother a strong and thought-provoking choice for sharing in a classroom or at home.
"Though the story is starkly realistic, there is always hope in the gifts of Jesse the artist and C. J. the musician, of schools and churches and of caring parents." (Kirkus)
"Touching and impactful, Autobiography cannot fail to intrigue, and hopefully influence youngsters with its poignant statement of two roads taken." (Judges' Citation, National Book Award)