A Book A Day ... December 12 and a modern-day Swan Lake

I. Love. Walter Dean Myers.
He's one of the best contemporary fiction writers on the market. His prose is poetry. He writes heartbreaking stories about life in inner cities. He writes about crime and hope. He writes about the human spirit.
Amiri and Odette is Myers'  verse picture book salute to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Illustrated by Javaka Steptoe, Amiri and Odette is one of the most phenomenally illustrated picture books I've seen in a long, LONG time. (The artist painted acrylics on asphalt slabs giving the story an exquisite urban feel.)
The story takes place in the Swan Lake projects. Amiri, obsessed with basketball, ignores his mother's pleas to find a good woman ... until he sees Odette. His heart is set on fire. But Odette is promised to Big Red -- a local drug dealer. Like the original Swan Lake, Amiri mistakes a girl who looks so much like Odette at his party for Odette and declares his love to her.
Myers uses verse to take this heartbreaking story of lost love to create an urban, contemporary feel. Plus, there are a few unexpected twists as well.

Exquisite! Exquisite! Exquisite! It's a perfect gift for ballet fans, urban art fans, poetry fans, Myers' fans ... A beautiful, unexpected, edgy picture book.