Once, at a reading festival before I was published, I saw a teacher stand up and, with tears in her eyes, practically beg a panel of middle grade authors to write for her urban hi-lo students. She pleaded that outside of Walter Dean Myers, there was no one who could get her boy students reading. I was moved because that’s exactly the audience I was writing for: urban teen boys who don’t read.

When I began this journey, it was quite by accident. I wrote one urban teen story and was quickly asked to do another and then a third. It wasn’t planned, but it seems that niche found me. Because I was using an urban voice (meaning slang), I was expecting some reaction along the lines of this is grammatically incorrect and we can’t have that! But quite the opposite happened: teachers and librarians got it. They all had urban students who were reluctant readers or non-readers. They all struggled to find books their kids could connect to. And they alone made my first book Chess Rumble a success.

Organizations like the American Library Association, Bank Street College of Education and the NCTE have embraced the book and me, which in turn, keeps spreading the word.

Because of that, I’ve been invited to a lot of middle schools around the country. Many of them have been Title 1 or as my teacher friend says “the forgotten schools.” But those schools have proven to be the best experiences of all because the teachers and librarians there cared and knew my book would connect with their students. And it has. Yes, I have seen teachers who were burnt out from the great demands of working in such schools. And that’s why I consider the teachers and librarians who have reached out to me on behalf of their students to be the real heroes. Without them, I’d be talking to the wind…

So for anyone out there feeling like they have a student who won’t read anything, don’t give up. There is a book out there somewhere waiting to open his eyes.