Reviewed by Christian C. for TeensReadToo.com

It's the summer of 1925 in Harlem, a summer that sixteen-year-old Mark Purvis will never forget. In just a months time, Mark will get to meet the best and the worst people of New York City.

Mark gets a job at The Crisis, a magazine that promotes and encourages "New Negroes." The magazine was part of a movement created during that time with a mission to discover talented persons of color -- poets, novelists, and musicians -- and show them to the world.

But Mark is not so sure that he wants to become a "New Negro." What he really wants to do is become a famous jazz player and play the saxophone with his band. So when "Fats," a well known piano player who made records, offers him and his friend, Henry, what sounds like an "innocent" job loading trucks in New Jersey, Mark and Henry don't think twice. This could be the opportunity they were looking for, their big break, a golden chance to be with "Fats" and tell him all about their jazz band. Maybe he could even help them get a record deal.

What Mark didn't know is that the job was actually for the most dangerous man and leading bootlegger, Dutch Schultz. And Mark didn't know that what they helped load was illegal alcohol, and that the truck driver was going to drive away, all of a sudden, with the merchandise. And now Dutch Schultz wants his money back, and he wants Mark and Henry to pay for it.

Will Mark get the money for Dutch Shultz? Will Mark become a "New Negro?" Will he be able to keep his job at The Crisis? Or will Mark end up traveling the wrong path? You'll have to read the book to find out.

Every single word in Walter Dean Myers' book flows effortlessly in this entertaining novel. He makes writing look easy.

HARLEM SUMMERS is a book that will strike a chord with all readers. Parents will love the lack of cursing and sex often seen in young adult literature. (Although, to be honest, I think that the author could have used some more cursing to make the dialogue sound a little more realistic.) Teachers and librarians will LOVE this novel that complements perfectly what we studied in 8th-grade social studies. I'm sure that this book will soon be part of many recommended summer reading lists. nd teens will love the story, because after all... who wouldn't want to meet the head of a notorious gang?!

The end of the book contains a section with biographical information of real individuals that appear in the book and lived in New York City during that period, like Alfred Knopf, Langston Hughes, "Bumby" Johnson, and others. ( )

Richie's Picks: HARLEM SUMMER by Walter Dean Myers, Scholastic Press, March 2007, ISBN: 0-439-36843-8

"As soon as the news got round
The folks downtown,
Came up to Harlem,
Saw everyone Truckin'

It didn't take long
Before the high-hats were doing it,
'Park Avenuing' it,
All over town,
You see them shufflin,' shufflin,' shufflin' down."

--"Truckin' " written by Rube Bloom and Ted Koehler, and performed by Fats Waller

These days the course is listed as, "Afrocentric Perspectives in the Arts." Back in the spring of 1975 it was titled "Black Experience in the Arts." A couple of guys in my dorm at the University of Connecticut had heard that "Black Arts" was an easy class, if only because the lectures were of a civilized nature, being that their frequency was but once a week and they were held IN THE EVENING rather at some ungodly hour that might involve having to wake up in order to attend class.

My dormmates persuaded me to tack the class on to my already full schedule for that semester. That way, if they were too busy to show up on a particular evening, they'd be able to copy my notes.

Back in the spring of 1975 I was a teenager who owed so much of my sensibilities to having grown up tolerant in lily white northern suburbs and having spent the 1960s watching the horrific news on television of white "Christians" engaged in the beating, maiming, and slaughtering of Negroes and Negro sympathizers during the Civil Rights era.

But while I knew a lot about what American citizens of color had endured before and during my childhood, I hadn't a clue at the beginning of my semester in Black Experience in the Arts of the existence of the Harlem Renaissance, nor any knowledge of the colorful characters whose work defined this rich cultural period in American history. But my knowledge base changed rapidly. Structured in large part as a series of guest lectures, my fond recollections of that course involved evenings of hearing first hand accounts of those lives and times. A particularly memorable highlight was listening to the late George Houston Bass who had been Langston Hughes' personal assistant and who served as the executor of Hughes' literary estate.

These experiences came roaring back (as in Roaring Twenties) as I read Walter Dean Myers' exceptionally fun romp, HARLEM SUMMER.

"C. Cephus Carter owned the House of Palms Funeral Home over on Lennox Avenue, down from Freddy's Fish Shack. Now, whenever you talked to that man he only had one thing on his mind, and that was how good the undertaking business was.
" 'Everybody you see is a potential customer!' he liked to say. And he said it again and again. 'People dying today ain't never even thought of dying before!' "

At the center of this HARLEM SUMMER is a sixteen year old young man of color named Mark. It is 1925, and Mark is an aspiring sax player who knows neighborhood star Fats Waller and dreams of jamming with the famous and beloved musician (who would have been twenty-one that summer). But the summer of 1925 gets much hotter than Mark could ever have imagined, thanks to his getting a summer job at the downtown office of THE CRISIS (which was and still is the official publication of the NAACP), and also thanks to Mark's finding himself --through events involving Fats Waller -- in serious trouble with the infamous Prohibition-era gangster Dutch Schultz.

As Mark deals with moms and mobsters dishing him out some serious grief, Walter Dean Myers succeeds in bringing to life the mid-Twenties Harlem summertime neighborhood as well as the cast of Harlem Renaissance musical and literary figures whom I'd learned about back in 1975.

(Of course, what is great fun --and what we couldn't do in 1975 -- is going online and listening to 30 second snippets of Fats Waller between chapters. This is certainly a book that begs for an accompanying CD of tunes and poetry readings.)

"I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers..."
--Langston Hughes

"Mr. Dill made out the checks for the May issue. Langston Hughes got two dollars for a poem that had only twenty-five words. That was eight cents a word! The writing business was starting to look better."

The root of Mark's troubles is his desire for money -- the easier the better. While most readers know Walter Dean Myers as the author of some pretty intense award-winning stories, many readers are going to be thoroughly surprised by HARLEM SUMMER because of its being so dang funny. For instance, when Mark figures that writing poetry might be a road to riches, he asks Langston Hughes about it:

" 'You think I could learn to write poetry?'
" 'Sure. I used to copy other people's poems and rewrite them,' Langston said. 'That gave me a feel for what it was like.' "

The poem that results from Mark's taking that advice had me rolling.

So download some Fats Waller tunes, shuffle on over into a shady spot, and check out HARLEM SUMMER.

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com ( )

Submitted by Noah...
THis book was NOT a page turner but showed how a boy in harlem grows up in the 1920's. The boy works for a magazine that advertises and praises the "New Negro" a new breed of black writers and eduacators. He also gets caught in the New York gangster buisness with big money but also big police men. He is stuck in these two contradicting situations with money, family, freinds, and music in between it all. Then when things get really rough no one can watch his back except himself.

In 1920s Harlem, sixteen-year-old Mark Purvis, an aspiring jazz saxophonist, gets a summer job as an errand boy for the publishers of the groundbreaking African American magazine, "The Crisis," but soon finds himself on the enemy list of mobster Dutch Shultz. ( )

Lots of information of the time period 1920's including many famous afro-americans. Marian ANderson, Langston Hughes, Du Bois... ( )