Friends, family members, colleagues, and those otherwise touched by the work of Walter Dean Myers gathered at Symphony Space in Manhattan on March 9 for an evening of rich and decidedly up-tempo ...

NEW YORK (AP) — Walter Dean Myers, a best-selling and prolific children’s author and tireless champion of literacy and education, has died. He was 76.

NEW YORK (AP) — Walter Dean Myers, a best-selling and prolific children’s author and tireless champion of literacy and education, has died. He was 76.

Growing up, the only authors Walter Dean Myers read in school were white and British. But when he discovered Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, he realized that he, too, could be a writer. Now ...

AP file photo Walter Dean Myers of Jersey City, a renowned children's book author, is seen touring his old Harlem neighborhood in 2010.

Myers' young adult novels talked about the tough realities of urban life in language that made teens stop and listen. He won almost every award for YA literature during the course of his career.

Whenever Walter Dean Myers wrote a book — and he published nearly 100 of them for children and teens — he would ask his wife, Connie, to assemble a collage of related images that he hung above ...