Sixteen-year-old Jimmy Lynch and another juvenile delinquent, Kevin, are able to avoid being sent to a youth facility, when they agree to go for a community mentoring program with a man named Duke, who just happens to run a barbershop. The two boys enter into the agreement with all the attitude you'd expect, and then, as time passes, they begin to learn some life lessons through the wisdom of the men who quietly mentor. Character after character walks through the door bringing with them the chance to explore the questions of manhood: drugs, hot babes, power, and strength of character. All the options are on the table for these two, as they watch and learn and listen. This is funny enough and true enough to entertain any young man and wise enough to satisfy his parents.
211 pages 978-0064409308 Ages 10-14
Keywords: coming of age, peer pressure, choices, conduct of life, African American and Black stories, African American author, diverse books, If You Liked A Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
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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.
Jimmy and Kevin could use a guide to life. When each of the boys gets in the kind of trouble that almost lands them in juvenile detention, their neighbor Duke steps in and offers them jobs in his Harlem barbershop.
The regulars at the barbershop seriously get on Jimmy’s nerves. Duke, Cap, and Mister M all seem determined to give the two boys a hard time. Still, it seems like everyone who walks through the door and sits in Duke’s chair has a story and a philosophy—whether they know it or not—and Jimmy is listening.
It drives Jimmy nuts when the adults in his life assume he doesn’t know anything—and he’s got a lot of anger to go around. But it might turn out that listening to the conversations in Duke’s shop could be the education on living that Jimmy needs.
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."---from the publisher
