Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Myers loved to read and write, but had a severe speech difficulty that created troubles with both teachers and classmates. He dropped out of high school, joining the Army on his seventeenth birthday. After getting out of the Army, Myers unloaded trucks, worked in the post office, and took whatever writing work he could find, including stories for the National Enquirer and advertising for cemeteries. In 1968 he won an award from the Council on Interracial Books for Children for his picture book, Where Does the Day Go?, and his career was off and running. His first young adult novel, Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff was published in 1975. Since then, Myers has written more than 30 books, both fiction and non-fiction, and has won many prizes, including the very first Michael L. Printz Award for his book Monster. Myers keeps pictures of his
characters on the wall above his computer and writes ten pages a day. Many of
his ideas come from his own life, including his love of basketball and his
childhood in Harlem. For Monster, he did more than 600 pages of
interviews with prison inmates and attended a seminar on Criminal Justice. His
youngest son, Christopher, illustrated the book. Myers has a wife and three
children, and currently lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Visit the Web Quest:
1. Read the book summary. 2. Visit the hot sites and consider the book’s themes, events, characters and settings. 3. Answer the quiz questions. 4. Look at the rubric to see how the quiz will be graded. Email: Dr. James Blasingame |