Love that Boy By Walter Dean Myers (Grades 4-6)

Growing up in West Virgia and Harlem, Walter Dean Myers experienced both the agragarian as well as the metropolitan life Black teen. However, it wasn't after reading James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues" did he begin to draw from his personal history for his writing. "Love that Boy", one of Myer's best known poems, is one such poem--exhibiting the simplicity of childhood, repetition and speech patterns of those in his childhood, and the love and secure attachment of the speakers family/