Synopses & Reviews
Chapter OneDuke's Place
The barbershop was on 145th Street, just off Seventh Avenue. They call it Duke's Place, but me and Kevin call it the Torture Chamber. Some people said that it was the oldest barbershop in the neighborhood, maybe even the oldest in Harlem. When I got there, I looked up at the wall clock and saw that it was three twenty-nine. I was early by one minute. Duke, who owned the place, was giving a guy a haircut. Mister M and Cap, the regular crew of old dudes, were already there. Cap was sitting in his favorite chair sipping on cold coffee like he always did. Mister M was reading El Diario, a Spanish newspaper. Cap took his pocket watch out and checked the time and then gave me a mean look. I knew he was glad when I was late so he could get on my case. That was just the way the guy was made. He had probably been the meanest baby in the nursery.
"Hey, looka here." Mister M looked up from his newspaper. "They got this guy down in Georgia who's going to give away fifty million dollars. Man, some people just don't know what to do with themselves."
"What would you do with the money, Duke?" Cap asked.
Duke put the finishing touches on his customer's fade, then held up a mirror so the man could see how his haircut had come out.
"I'd put the money in the bank, down in the safe deposit vault," Duke said. "And maybe once a month I'd go visit it. Rub some all over myself till I got satisfied, then I'd put it all back until the next visit."
"Think you would move away from Harlem?" Cap asked. "Maybe go down to Florida or someplace like that?"
"You taking me out of Harlem would be like taking a fish out of water," Duke said. "I've got this place in my blood."
He tookthe money for the haircut and put it in the cash register.
"See you next month," he called after the customer.
"Wasn't that the guy who used to own the grocery store on Eighth Avenue?" Cap asked as the door closed.
"Yeah," Duke said, cleaning off his barbering tools. "Bill McCormick used to have that little piece of store on the corner until he started spending more time at the racetrack than he spent in his store."
Just then the door flew open and Kevin, sweating and puffing, came rushing in.
"Am I late?" Kevin asked, looking up at the clock that read three thirty-three.
"It depends," Duke said, "on whether you mean for today or for tomorrow. You're late for today, but you got a real good jump on tomorrow."
"Duke, you're wasting your money on this boy," Cap said as Kevin took off his jacket. "Your deal with him is that he's going to work for you after school for two years and you're going to pay his first two years of college, is that right?"
"That's right," Duke said.
"If he can't even tell time, how's he going to make it all the way through college?"
"Maybe he's fixing to learn how to tell time when he reaches college," Mister M said. "Even this ten-year-old boy knows how to tell time. What's your name again, boy?"
"My name is Jimmy, and I'm sixteen, not ten," I said.
"You got to keep them straight," Cap said. "Jimmy here's the young one. He's sixteen, and he's on parole from Alcatraz, or some place like that. Kevin is seventeen, and he's the one Duke is paying to get out of town."
Mister M cracked up on that. He's got this high laugh, and he slapped his leg like he was getting a big kick out of it. It wasn't funny to me. I started to say something, butwhen I looked over at Duke, he was shaking his head like he was disgusted, so I just kept my mouth shut and started dusting around the plants in the window. By this time Kevin had grabbed a broom and started sweeping the floor.
That's why me and Kevin call the place the Torture Chamber. Duke lets his old-time friends hang around all the time and stay on our cases.
Duke was tall and thin and always stood up straight even though he was sixty-eight years old. He told us he had gone to Storer, a black college in West Virginia, to study biology but ended up taking over his father's barbershop business.
"When I was coming up, you had to take what opportunities you could find," Duke was always saying.
They called Edward Mills "Cap" because he used to work in the courts as a guard and always talked about all the criminals he had seen. Cap was about the same age as Duke. He and Duke met when they were playing basketball in a tournament back in the olden days...
Synopsis
In the groundbreaking tradition of his award-winning Monster and Bad Boy: A Memoir, Walter Dean Myers fashions a highly readable, powerful novel about the rules for success for young men, especially those navigating coming of age while Black.
Share this book in the classroom, in a father-son reading group, or as a summer reading (or anytime) choice that's likely to spark conversation and be a favorite.
When the proprietor of a Harlem barbershop takes over as the court-appointed mentor for two troubled teenagers, he conveys the message that the future is built not only on hard work but on sustaining dreams as well. (Smithsonian magazine).
In his introduction to Handbook for Boys, Walter Dean Myers wrote: I know as a troubled teenager I would have loved to have a neighborhood barbershop to sit in and a group of worldly and knowledgeable men to counsel me. Thinking about this was my motivation in writing this book, hoping it will be, in the least, a jumping-off point for many interesting conversations about success.
--Nate Tiny Archibald
Synopsis
"The trick to the whole thing,"Duke said, "is to pick your
own road in life."
Growing up is tough ... really tough. But what if you had a handbook that told you how to figure things out? How to stay out of trouble?
At Duke's Place, Jimmy and Kevin find out that the handbook doesn't need to be written down. It can be as easy as listening to Duke and the old guys talking about their lives. But how can Duke understand what it is to be young now?
Synopsis
Jimmy and Kevin could really use a guide to life.
Their activities almost land them in juvenile detention until Duke employs them in his Harlem barbershop. Duke has rules for everything. But is he offering good advice or just more aggravation?
In the groundbreaking tradition of the award-winning Monster and Bad Boy: A Memoir, Walter Dean Myers fashions a complex, layered novel about the rules for success. Handbook for Boys is the book that he wishes he could have read while growing up. It is also the book young people need to read today.
Ages 10+
Synopsis
< p=""> < b=""> Jimmy and Kevin could really use a guide to life. <> <> < p=""> Their activities almost land them in juvenile detention until Duke employs them in his Harlem barbershop. Duke has rules for everything. But is he offering good advice or just more aggravation?<> < p=""> In the groundbreaking tradition of the award& ndash; winning < i=""> Monster<> and < i=""> Bad Boy: A Memoir<> , Walter Dean Myers fashions a complex, layered novel about the rules for success. < i=""> Handbook for Boys<> is the book that he wishes he could have read while growing up. It is also the book young people need to read today.<> < p=""> Ages 10+<> < p=""> <> <> <>
About the Author
Walter Dean Myers is an award-winning writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for young people. He has received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for his contribution to young adult literature and is a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. His many titles include
Bad Boy: A Memoir; Monster, the 2000 Michael L. Printz Award winner and National Book Award Finalist; and
Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly, illustrated by Leonard Jenkins. Walter Dean Myers lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.
In His Own Words...
I am a product of Harlem and of the values, color, toughness and caring that I found there as a child.I learned my flat jump shot in the church basement and got my first kiss during recess at Bible school. I played the endless street games kids played in the pre-television days and paid enough attention to candy and junk food to dutifully alarm my mother.
From my foster parents, the Deans, I received the love that was ultimately to strengthen me, even when I had forgotten its source. It was my foster mother, a half Indian-half German woman, who taught me to read, though she herself was barely literate.
I had a speech difficulty but didn't view it as anything special. It wasn't necessary for me to be much of a social creature once I discovered books. Books took me, not so much to foreign lands and fanciful adventures, but to a place within myself that I have been constantly exploring ever since.
The George Bruce Branch of the public Library was my most treasured place. I couldn't believe my luck in discovering what I enjoyed most -- reading -- was free. And I was tough enough to carry the books home through the streets without too many incidents.
At sixteen it seemed a good idea to leave school, and so I did. On my seventeenth birthday I joined the army. After the army there were jobs -- some good, some bad, few worth mentioning. Leaving school seemed less like a good idea.
Writing for me has been many things. It was a way to overcome the hindrance of speech problems as I tried to reach out to the world. It was a way of establishing my humanity in a world that often ignores the humanity of those in less favored positions. It was a way to make a few extra dollars when they were badly needed.
What I want to do with the writing keeps changing, too. Perhaps I just get clearer in what it is I am doing. I'm sure that after I'm dead someone will lay it all out nicely. I'd hate to see what kind of biography my cat, Askia, would write about me. Probably something like "Walter Dean Myers had enormous feet, didn't feed me on time, and often sat in my favorite chair." At any rate, what I think I'm doing now is rediscovering the innocence of children that I once took for granted. I cannot relive it or reclaim it, but I can expose it and celebrate it in the books I write. I really like people -- I mean I really like people -- and children are some of the best people I know.
I've always felt it a little pretentious to write about yourself, but it's not too bad if you don't write too much.
-- Walter Dean Myers