Street Love - Paperback

by Walter Dean Myers (Author)

This groundbreaking novel in verse from Walter Dean Myers--two-time Newbery Honor winner and five-time Coretta Scott King Award winner--is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story set in Harlem. Share this one with readers taken with books by Jason Reynolds, Nic Stone, and Elizabeth Acevedo.

Whether read at home or in the classroom, and alongside the original inspiration or on its own. Street Love is sure to spark opinions and conversations.

"This verse novel, in which entire poems dazzle readers with rhyme and rhythm and voice, finds Damien, a straight-A student, headed for Brown University. But he falls in love with Junice, a girl whose mother has just been incarcerated for selling drugs, and his direction could change. Readers enjoy multiple perspectives on this romance and the decision Damien makes." (Kirkus starred review)

"Hip-hop fans, readers of poetry, and hopeless romantics will respond to the emotional vibrancy of this powerful work." (VOYA)

Your first love is totally wrong for you.

Or do you run away?

Walter Dean
Myers was a New York Times bestselling author, Printz Award
winner, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, two-time Newbery
Honor recipient, and the National Ambassador for Young People's
Literature. Maria Russo, writing in the New York
Times, called Myers
"one of the greats and a champion of diversity in children's books well
before the cause got mainstream attention."

Front Jacket

Your first love is totally wrong for you.
Do you follow your heart?
Or do you run away?

Junice

What am I doing? He'll take one quick look
And wish he was anywhere else but here
I'm already ashamed of what I think
He will think of me, of the life I lead

Damien

Yes, she is the fruit that will
Sustain me and yes, she brings
A rain that I know can chill
But it is a rain so sweet and sings
A song my soul insists
That I follow, if I would exist
As more than I have ever, ever been
If my mother calls it evil, then I embrace the sin

Back Jacket

Your first love is totally wrong for you.
Do you follow your heart?
Or do you run away?

Junice

What am I doing? He'll take one quick look
And wish he was anywhere else but here
I'm already ashamed of what I think
He will think of me, of the life I lead

Damien

Yes, she is the fruit that will
Sustain me and yes, she brings
A rain that I know can chill
But it is a rain so sweet and sings
A song my soul insists
That I follow, if I would exist
As more than I have ever, ever been
If my mother calls it evil, then I embrace the sin