Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

Few men in American history are as controversial as Malcolm X. In this provocative biography, Myers, winner of a Newbery Honor and four-time Coretta Scott King Award winner, presents a forthright portrait of a complex man whose life reflected the major events of our times.

Seeing no way out of his difficult life in Harlem, seventeen-year-old Jeremy "Lil J" Dance flees into a house after a drug deal goes awry and meets a weird man who shows different turning points in Lil J's life when he could have made better choices.

An award-winning author guides readers through the writing process, and includes examples from his own works, outlines for writing fiction and nonfiction, and excerpted pages from the author's writing notebooks.

Sixteen-year-old "Slam" Harris is counting on his noteworthy basketball talents to get him out of the inner city and give him a chance to succeed in life, but his coach sees things differently.

In May of 1944 Josiah Wedgewood, a recruit for the US Army, sees in the "colored" regimen a black man he thinks he knows. Closer inspection shows the man to be his friend, Marcus Perry, and the two are glad to meet each other again in the fight against the Nazis. However, as the war heats up the future of these two young men is far from certain as they learn what it really means to fight.

"Two best friends, a writer and a runner, deal with bullies, family issues, social pressures, and their quest for success coming out of Harlem"--Provided by publisher.

Written in the form of interviews, reports, and journal entries, the story of three troubled teenagers ends in a tragic school shooting.

If Harlem high school senior Drew Lawson is going to realize his dream of playing college, then professional, basketball, he will have to improve at being coached and being a team player, especially after a new--white--student threatens to take the scouts' attention away from him.

From bebop to New Orleans, from ragtime to boogie--and every style in between--this collection of energetic poems, accompanied by bright and exhilarating paintings, celebrates different styles of the American art form, jazz.