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Overview
If you were looking for a real ghetto dump, you couldn’t beat The Stratford Arms. There was Askia Ben Kenobi throwing karate chops upstairs, Petey Darden making booze downstairs, and Mrs. Brown grieving for Jack Johnson, who’d died for the third time in a month—and not a rent payer in the bunch. Still, when Paul Williams and the Action Group got the Arms for one dollar, they thought they had it made. But when their friend Chris was arrested for stealing stereos and Dean’s dog started biting fire hydrants and Gloria started kissing, being a landlord turned out to be a lot more work than being a kid.
Five devoted friends become landlords and try to make their Harlem neighborhood a better place to live.
Synopsis
If you were looking for a real ghetto dump, you couldn't beat The Stratford Arms. There was Askia Ben Kenobi throwing karate chops upstairs, Petey Darden making booze downstairs, and Mrs. Brown grieving for Jack Johnson, who'd died for the third time in a month—and not a rent payer in the bunch. Still, when Paul Williams and the Action Group got the Arms for one dollar, they thought they had it made. But when their friend Chris was arrested for stealing stereos and Dean's dog started biting fire hydrants and Gloria started kissing, being a landlord turned out to be a lot more work than being a kid.
Children's Literature
Reading the early works of a writer as accomplished as Walter Dean Myers is always interesting, but with this book it is also a real pleasure. Sure there are a few bumps and wrinkles—the "action" part of the plot seems ancillary to the book, rather than integral to it, and the wrap-up is not particularly satisfying—but these things hardly matter. The young protagonists are so well drawn, so complex, and so true in their emotional depth, readers will not want to let them go when the last page is turned. Set in a working-class African-American neighborhood in New York City during the 1970s, and narrated with deadpan clarity by 16-year-old Paul Williams, the book follows six teenagers who take on running—and trying to improve—an apartment building in their neighborhood. Along the way, they get a taste of how difficult it can be to make a difference in their community, as well as how rewarding it can be to try. There is no forced hilarity here, but plenty of humor bubbles through the relationships between the characters, and Myers's command of dialogue is masterful. Reviewer: Barbara Carroll Roberts