This past July saw the passing of the legendary YA author Walter Dean Myers. Over his lifetime Walter wrote over 100 books for teens and children, won and was nominated for countless literary awards such as the Newbery, Printz, Coretta Scott King, Margaret Edwards, Hans Christian Anderson, among others... However, what made Walter special wasn’t necessarily his books or writing, although those are still pretty special. No, what made Walter stand out was his tireless belief that the telling and reading of all kinds of stories mattered, that teens mattered, communities and families mattered, and that libraries and librarians mattered. I remember Walter telling me and other NYPL librarians that he told the stories he told of African-American teens in Harlem and New York City because he needed to. He needed to give voice to their lives, their experiences, their realities because at the time he started no one else was and he was grateful to YA librarians for helping to get those stories out there into the hands that needed them.

What I remember most about Walter was his kindness and his sense of humor, his graciousness. When I started at NYPL in 1998, I could count on one hand the number of authors I’d met. Now I’d need at least 20 hands to get through them all, but Walter still stands out. I remember he was tall with a deep, booming voice like James Earl Jones and I remember thinking he probably did a great Darth Vader impression but I never asked him. Instead, I shyly told him how much I’d loved Slam (1998) and he’d told me how wonderful he thought it was that I worked for New York Public Library in Harlem and wished me well. I’m sure he said that to everyone, he came to a lot of NYPL events but to a young librarian, who’d just started working in New York City, it was like being anointed. I would see him many times over the years and every time was memorable. In many ways, I think he felt in partnership with urban librarians—after all, we were serving the very teens he was writing for and about.

He wasn’t just tireless in his visits to libraries but to schools, prisons, and juvenile detention facilities as well. He wrote Monster (1999), (inaugral Michael L. Printz winner in 2000) after meeting with teens in these places. Having visited with incarcerated teens myself, I know that you can’t leave them without being forever marked by their faces and stories. In Monster, Walter tells the story of Steve, a teen boy navigating prison and the judicial system through the writing of a film script. Walter wrote it as if it had been dictated to him. The voice of Steve is that realistic. Teens across the country (whether African American or not) can connect to that kind of realism, that authenticity.  He found these authentic voices by endlessly meeting and talking with young people. He visited as many schools as he could across the country. I think in New York City he was particularly visible. I remember once, about 10 years ago, I was visiting Washington Irving High School near Union Square and the school librarian apologized for the chaos but Walter Dean Myers was visiting that afternoon. A student nearby overheard this and goes, “What? Again?” I remember laughing at this jaded NYC teen for being so bored at getting to see an award winning author “again”. She explained that she’d met him when he’d visited her middle school in the Bronx and again at her youth center in Upper Manhattan.  I asked her if she’d liked his talks before.  “Yeah,” she said, ”He’s totally cool and all but you know, I want to meet other authors too.” While a tad jaded, the girl proves my point. When he had the time, Walter pretty much went anywhere he was asked because he knew teens needed to be heard and listened to, that their stories were important.

Walter wrote a little bit of everything. He wrote sport stories (Hoops, Kick, Game, Outside Shot), edgy urban stories (Darius & Twig, Dope Sick, Lockdown, Shooter, 145th St), love stories (What They Found, Carmen, Street Love), historical fiction (Fallen Angels, Harlem Summer, Riot, Invasion), poetry (Jazz, Here in Harlem, Harlem), memoir (Bad Boy), non-fiction (Just Write: Here's How), biographies (Muhammad Ali, Ida B. Wells, Down to the Last Out),  picture books (We Are America, Looking Like Me, Looking for the Easy Life). The list goes on and on and on.  All written with the same committment and assertion that ALL children and teens need books and stories filled with characters and people that look like them. Teens constantly ask NYPL librarians for stories, “about people that are like me” and you can always look under “Myers”  on the fiction shelf.

His passing leaves a huge hole in YA literature. For as all-encompassing as it has gotten there is still a lack of diversity in YA. The simple breadth of stories that Walter told from  minority teens' points of view is incredible. Not that there aren’t some great authors out there right now telling diverse stories: Sharon Draper, Matt de la Pena, Christopher Paul Curtis, Rita Williams-Garcia, Jacqueline Woodson, Kekla Magoon... just to name a few. But he will still be missed. I’m sure many authors have stories of meeting Walter and having him encourage them knowing that what they do and who they write for is so important. Just last week, I met author Jason Reynolds who wrote When I Was the Greatest (2014), a book about everyday teens in Brooklyn (which FYI is fabulous). He recounted a story of how when he was a struggling writer still working retail, Walter had visited him at work to tell him he’d read his story and encouraged him to “keep writing” and “keep telling his stories his way”. In a nutshell, this is who Walter Dean Myers was: giving, encouraging, kind. Yes, he was a great author but he was a great guy first and foremost.

The legacy of Walter Dean Myers looms large here at The New York Public Library and he’ll never be forgotten. He’ll be remembered for his commitment to YA literature and for writing authentically for and about New York City teens, his commitment to making a difference not just in New York but around the country and his commitment to libraries and librarians, who he knew worked so hard to help the teens in their neighborhoods, communities and schools.

So on behalf of The New York Public Library and its Librarians, Thank You Walter for all you did for us and for the youth of New York City. It’s been a pleasure.

On Monday May 4th, 2015, Walter will be honored with a plaque at the George Bruce Library in Harlem, the NYPL branch he used as a child. The library will be dedicated as a Literary Landmark as part of Childrens Book Week 2015 festivities. The Literary Landmark program is adminsitered by United for Libraries, a division of the American Libraries Association. The ceremony is open to the public and starts at 1pm at the George Bruce Library. 

For lists of available books of Walter Dean Myers at NYPL browse this list and search Bibliocommons. 

For more information, visit his official website: walterdeanmyers.net.