Title: Fallen Angeles
Author: Walter Dean Myers
Publish Date: May 2008
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc.
Pages: 309pp
ISBN: 0545055768
Classification: Fiction
Genre: Historical Fiction
Age Range: 14 and up
Price: $6.99
Annotation: Richie Perry, a seventeen-year-old from Harlem, arrives in Vietnam in 1967. This is his story.
Summary: After his high school graduation seventeen-year-old Richie Perry joins the army because college was too expensive and the job market was scarce. Richie enlists in the army to play for the professional basketball team. After he injures his knee he ends up being shipped overseas for combat duty. This is when we enter Richie’s deep narration of the war and what it felt like for him (and for you as the reader). ``We spent another day lying around. It seemed to be what the war was about. Hours of boredom, seconds of terror.'' (p.132) . Through the narration we see Richie get discriminated against (racially) and assigned to all the dangerous missions. In the end, Richie returns home wounded.
Evaluation: A compelling story about the Vietnam War that neither condemns nor glorifies it, but rather opens the reader up to thinking about the event that took place. The dialog is raw and appropriately fits the characters and the setting of the story. The honest narration from Richie evokes extreme sympathy and insightfulness.
Bibliotherapeutic Usefulness:
- Racially discriminated.
- Poverty.
- Having limited choices due to being poor.
- Being placed in harms way, due to your skin color (nationality, etc.)
Reason this book was chosen: I have heard many wonderful things about Walter Dean Myers. When this book showed up on the required reading list I was elated because I have wanted to read it for some time now. As one of the first YA books that incorporates war, Fallen Angels is definitely a must read.
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Author Website: Click HERE
Awards:
Awards:
Coretta Scott King Awards, 1989
ALA Best Books for Young Adults, 1988
A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book, 1989
ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults, 1998 
