Best-selling young adult author and literacy ambassador Walter Dean Myers died last Tuesday at the age of 76. His books often told the stories of young African-Americans who dealt with troubles in the streets, in school and at home.
Myers understood the problems of the characters he wrote about in books like Monster, Lockdown and Fallen Angels. He was a high school dropout who grew up in a foster home in Harlem. But he was an excellent reader and had a high school teacher who encouraged his writing. Meyers went on to write over one-hundred books on a variety of topics and was a three-time National Book Award Nominee, received the Coretta Scott King Book Award for African American fiction five times and from 2012-2013 served as national ambassador for young people’s literature, a position created in part by the Library of Congress.
Walter Dean Myers was one of the featured authors at the 2013 South Dakota Festival of Books in Deadwood. During a backstage interview, Myers talked about his latest book for young adults, Darius and Twig, and discussed the problem of illiteracy in impoverished neighborhoods.
