This story is set in Harlem where the character is moving to because that’s where the feel a sense of belonging and everyone is like them. The author describes their ride from one neighborhood into Harlem where the scenes and the people where more familiar and you can almost see and feel the different environment by his description of the scene. He describes their pride, their joys and pains, and their struggles while living happily there in Harlem, where everyone relates.

I like the style and language the author uses to describe Harlem because he gives you a visual of Harlem. The illustrations used with their bold colors and precise distinctions bring the author’s words to life. We can all relate to belonging to a particular neighborhood, or group and even though we struggled at times, we were still content to belong to that organization.

This book can be used to discuss belonging to different groups, clubs, activities, or even Families. You could discuss the benefits and downfalls of belonging to certain groups and the feelings involved. ( )

The artwork in Walter Dean Myers book, Harlem: A Poem, is rich in color, feeling and expression. Each page is a beautiful depiction of life in Harlem showing everyday life, yet telling the story of the remarkable people who came from there during Harlem's heyday. From the streets came Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Leonard, Langston Huges, Count Basie, W.E.B. DeBois, just to name a few. Harlem is a place rich in Black history, where religion was important and music was a guiding force.

The strength of this book is definitely the pictures, which is why it was a Caldecott Honor book. The story, in verse form, was sometimes difficult to follow. I got the feeling that Myers was being deliberately obtuse in an effort to be poetic. I didn't get it. Because the verse is difficult to sort through, this book is more appropriate for an older audience; children who are younger than 7th grade will probably struggle to understand it without heavy interpretation from a teacher or parent.

In my opinion, the strength of this book are the illustrations, and not the verse. ( )

Christopher Myers uses several different types of art techniques to uproot his audience and plant them in Harlem. Myers illustrates scenes of children running through a fire hydrant on a hot summer day, preachers preaching, and ladies singing gospels. One of his illustrations shows “perfumed sisters/Hip strutting past fried fish joints” (n.p.). Although his pictures most often follow the text, the facial expressions he has put on his characters tell the story the best. Most of the faces look withdrawn and show an expression of yearning - a yearning to get out. ( )

The writing is through unrhyming poetry, and is used to describe what Harlem looks, sounds, and feels like. It was a beautiful portrayal, with vivid language. Ther writing style was incrediblly impressive. ( )

Kirkus Reviews /* Starred Review */ A hot new artist and his distinguished father fashion a picture book with a stirring sound at its center. Walter Dean Myers (Slam!, p. 1536, etc.) gives poetry a jazz backbeat to tell the story of Harlem, the historic center of African-American culture in New York City. To newcomers from Waycross, Georgia, from East St. Louis, from Trinidad, "Harlem was a promise." Listing the streets and the churches, naming Langston and Countee, Shango and Jesus, the text is rich with allusion. The imagery springs to life at once: "Ring-a-levio warriors/Stickball heroes"; "a full lipped, full hipped/Saint washing collard greens . . . Backing up Lady Day on the radio." A strong series of images of ink and gouache capture the beauty of faces, from the very old to very young, from golden to blue-black. Christopher Myers sets his scenes to match the streets, fire escapes, jazz clubs, and kitchens of Harlem, and makes them by turns starkly stylized as an Egyptian mask or sweet as a stained glass window. Put this on the shelf next to Chris Raschka's Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop (1992) and see if anyone can sit still when the book is read aloud.
(Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 1996)

Gr. 6-12. The two Myerses--author and artist, father and son--celebrate Harlem, which they perceive both as a city and a "promise of a better life," in quite different but wonderfully complementary ways. The author views Harlem--where he grew up--as a symbol of African American aspiration; the artist shares a more concrete city composed of "colors loud enough to be heard." In a text that is as much song as poem, the author offers his impressionistic appreciation for a culture that is predominantly music-based, with its roots in "calls and songs and shouts" "first heard in the villages of Ghana/Mali/Senegal." In his hotly vibrant ink, gouache, and collage images, the artist shows us the textures of the city streets, the colors of "sun yellow shirts on burnt umber bodies," and even, it seems, the sounds the words themselves evoke. The very look of metaphorical moments is well served by the text, but it is Harlem as a visual experience that YAs will return to again and again, to admire and wonder at what is realized with truly extraordinary grace and power by this young artist of such wonderful promise. (Reviewed February 15, 1997)0590543407Michael Cart Appeared in: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc. ( )