CHILDREN'S
Released: Sept. 1, 1992
"And the intended audience will enjoy the play-by- play games and their genuinely childlike errors and successes—as well as the ongoing joke of T.J.'s overrating his own prowess. (Fiction. 8-12)"
The appealing young baseball players introduced in 1988's Me, Mop, and the Moondance Kid (about an interracial New Jersey group, including recently adopted narrator T.J., his brother Moondance, and a girl from the same orphanage who's adopted by their coach) are featured here in a tournament with teams from Mexico, Japan, and France plus their usual local rivals.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: May 1, 1992
"Sober, thought-provoking, rich in insight and detail: another splendid achievement. (Fiction. 12+)"
An eminent author who's excelled with both tragedy (Scorpions, 1988, Newbery Honor) and funny, lighthearted novels writes in a serious vein but offers a realistic gleam of hope.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Dec. 30, 1991
"For Americans of any color, he makes a notably persuasive case for doing both. (Nonfiction. 11+)"
What happens when a gifted novelist (Scorpions, 1988, Newbery Honor) chooses to write the story of his people?
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CHILDREN'S
Released: April 25, 1990
"A beautifully written, thoroughly entertaining caper; an impressive addition to Myers' already impressive Oeuvre."
Mouse is a nice, bright 14-year-old—but not quite sure how he feels about his dad turning up after an absence of eight years to date his mom and to make a clumsy effort to be friends with him.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Nov. 1, 1988
"An easily enjoyed story, yet thoughtful, perceptive, and possessing real depth."
Myers' third fine book this year—unlike Fallen Angels (p. 696/C- 114) and Scorpions (p. 764/C-126)—is relatively light-hearted, involving kids playing Little League baseball near Jersey City, N.J. Still—though the exciting play-by-play games will satisfy sports buffs—narrator T.J. tells more than a baseball story.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: June 1, 1988
"A painful story with a conclusion that offers escape as an answer—but not as a solution."
Teen-age readers will be familiar with harsh events like these from headlines and TV reports; Myers brings a comples understanding to dealing with them.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: May 30, 1988
"War-story fans will find enough action here, though it isn't glorified; thoughtful readers will be haunted by this tribute to a ravaged generation."
CHILDREN'S
Released: May 1, 1987
"And no one can complain about the moral."
The story of a black teen-ager caught in the fast-lane world of modeling, with the personal cost in stress that goes with the glamour and money as the main theme.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Feb. 1, 1987
"There's no physical violence or drug abuse here, but these tales are nonetheless very scary, and adolescent readers will find them involving and disturbing."
CHILDREN'S
Released: Oct. 12, 1983
"Unlike more strenuous efforts, the one grows on you by degrees."
Rudimentary skulduggery on an Egyptian archaeological dig—for kids who take to Myers' no-frills storytelling, simple set-ups, and good sense.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: May 23, 1983
"The chase and the boy-girl match are strictly standard stuff; and if The Nicholas Factor represents a shaky advance in political sophistication, the implausible motivation of all the Crusaders, villains and dupes alike, requires an overgenerous suspension of judgment."
In this junior-grade spy thriller Myers moves from his easy colloquial stories of good-doing Harlem teens to older characters—narrator Gerald McQuillen is a 17-year-old college freshman—and a less innocent, warier view of self-appointed world-savers.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: May 3, 1982
"Another of Myers' winning, medium-cool raps in the service of good old-fashioned values."
Like The Young Landlords who found themselves responsible to the diverse elderly tenants of a rundown tenement, Myers' latest group of wholesome early teenagers spends a summer helping out at a neighborhood old-people's home.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Oct. 22, 1980
"If it's all a little goody-goody, Myers as usual cloaks his straight-and-narrow messages in easy colloquial dialogue and street-corner savvy."
"How come you ain't nothing but some children? I ain't never heard of no children landlords before."
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Oct. 13, 1980
"However kids construe this, it has only Pundabi's wise stratagem to commend it: the telling has no lift, the pictures have a cliched, picturesque likeness to India but no conviction."
If it's appropriate for a story about a kvetch "to have a Yiddish flavor" (see Chapman, above), it may be appropriate for a story of ineffable wisdom to be set in India; the problem is that it has no flavor.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: March 17, 1980
"Quackenbush writes some extra jokes into the pictures, but overall his illustrations are so loud that they drown out the words—a fate that the first story deserves and the second is too weak to overcome."
CHILDREN'S
Released: Sept. 25, 1978
"Sound base, authentic surface—like Tippy, a winner."
As both Branscum and Rabe come out with grit-and-hardship dramas of 1930s orphans, Myers gives us a contemporary Harlem kid whose problems seem more real and more serious even though he has a father and, thanks to welfare, knows he will eat.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Oct. 1, 1977
"No tea leaves needed to figure out the resolution, but kids will respond to the vitality, stoop wisdom, and scattered magic."
As in Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff (1975), Myers has rounded up a bunch of spunky youngsters, and their snappy dialogue and urban brio tend to cover up the plot improbabilities.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: April 1, 1975
"Stuff can be a little long-winded in Holden Caulfield-like digressions, and his friends awfully earnest in their discussions of sex and drugs, but in general his colloquial first-person narrative projects a sense of enviable group rapport with an easy mix of nostalgia and humor."
Stuff, the youngest, moves to 116th Street when he is twelve and a half, and this is by way of a fond memoir of the kids he came to hang out with.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: Sept. 1, 1974
"Despite occasionally conspicuous attempts to be poetic, an affecting balance of wishes and reality, well suited to reading aloud."
Soft black and brown sketches of Jimmy and his inner city world provide a quiet, suggestive accompaniment to Myers' pleasingly fluent prose-poem about the little boy's dreams of flying like a bird.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: April 15, 1972
"MPSLUGMRS Rockwell's pictures do their best to make up for the absence of music and dance to sustain the fantasy, but the story is less imaginative than just unlikely."
This begins as a realistic story about a little boy (black) going to work with his father (a prop man?) and watching Yvonne, a beautiful ballerina (white) rehearse.
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CHILDREN'S
Released: March 10, 1972
"A mismatch in every respect."
It's evident from the start of this pointless intercultural hocus-pocus that Harry the lonely dragon is a real loser: in order to win a wife he must defeat a knight in battle, but Harry can't fight.
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