Walter Dean Myers - PowerPoint - PowerPoint

							Walter Dean Myers
      By: Andrea Mann

  Author of Monster and
Autobiography of my Dead
         Brother
                            Characters
               Monster                             Autobiography of my Dead
                                                             Brother

The main character of Monster is a young     In this book Walter Dean Myers chooses
   black boy named Steve. While Steve is         to use teenage black boys who live in
   in jail he meets a variety of people,         a ghetto neighborhood. They meet a
   such as gangsters for minor crimes            group of gangsters Diablos who are
   and murderers who are in jail for their       rough cut black boys living in a ghetto
   whole lives. However in the courtroom,        neighborhood near by.
   there is a whole new class of people.
   They are clean cut, well dressed, and
   educated.




    He chooses to young black boys who end up getting in some kind of trouble
    with the law. While he was growing up he would hang out with kids his age
    that were black like him which inspired him to write stories with these
    characters.
                                                Dialect
                     Monster                                   Autobiography of my Dead
Quote: “Banks is were the money is.”pg51                                 Brother
                                                          Quote: “Just rapping about what was going
This is an example of ghetto talk. The                       on in the neighborhood or with our
    prisoners in this story used this language               homeys.”pg13
    most often.
                                                          Quote: “He was a cop and everybody was
                                                             suppose to be a little uptight with cops
Quote: “So what did Richard Evans, the man                   because we were all, like, deep down
   we are referring to at Bobo, suggest to                   gangsters and just chill prowling to keep
   you?” pg53                                                people out of our bizness, but Sidney
                                                             was righteous.” pg32
This is a very educated language which is
    used in the courtroom the majority of the
    time.




  In both of these stories, the author uses a form of street or ghetto talk. This is a
  reflection of the language that he heard as he was growing up in West Virginia.
  Bibliography: http://www.walterdeanmyers.net/bio.html
                                      Theme
                 Monster                                  Autobiography of my Dead
                                                                    Brother
Throughout this book the main character, Steve,   Jessie learns that he need to be smart in his
    learns that if you do not make good               choices and actions. He learns to treat
    decisions and sees the consequences if you        people as he would want to be treated. Rise
    make bad choices. Before he gets into             plans to have a member of their rival gang
    trouble he wants to be friends with the           killed and that eventually comes back to him
    people who will later get him into lots of        and he gets shot. He also learns to stay out
    trouble. He learns that he needs to choose        of trouble and to avoid things that could get
    friends who will bring out the best in him.       him into trouble.
                                     Setting
                  Monster                             Autobiography of My Dead
                                                               Brother
  This book is placed in several different      This story is set in the ghetto. There are
      places. It takes place in Steve’s jail        drive bys, shootings, and holdups that
      cell. It also takes place in several          take place there. Sometimes they are
      different scenes like Steve’s house           in the apartments that line the streets
      when he has flashbacks. The final             and other times they are in the streets
      setting is the court room were they are       themselves. Occasionally they are in
      the majority of the time.                     the the few shops that they have
                                                    around the neighborhood.




The author chose to write in this setting because he grew up in an area like this with
lots of colored people around in the streets of Harlem.
                                       Biography
   Born August 12, 1937 in Martinsburg, West Virginia
   Moved to Harlem with his foster parents at the age of three
   Attended Stuyvesant High School until seventeen when He joined
    the army
   Earned a BA from Empire State College
   He has been writing full time since 1977
   Publishing since 1969 when he won the Council on Interracial Books
    for Children contest
   Published over seventy books for children and young adults
   Won several awards on the books he has written
   Monster and Autobiography of My Dead Brother were selected as
    National Book Award Finalists
Bibliography:http://www.walterdeanmyers.net/bio.html
                    Connection
         Monster                        Autobiography of my Dead
                                                 Brother
In both these books you can see what kind of people and language
surrounded him as he was a child growing up. As he was growing up
he was surrounded by mostly black people just like him most of his
friends were very involved with gangs. He would