Myers, W.D. (1999). Monster. NY: Harper. Steve is a sixteen year old African American on trail for murder. Monster as the prosecutor called Steve is a novel about knowing the wrong people. Hanging out with the wrong crowd. Associating with the wrong kind of people. Steve says he is innocent, but Bobo is accusing him of being involved in the crime. The fact that he is a young black man from Harlem doesn't help his case. In the end the jury found Steve Harmon innocent. He was free to go home. Weeks after the trail Steve was constantly taking pictures of himself. He wanted to know who he was. He didn't recognize himself anymore. He wanted to find the real him. A strength I found was that Steve's father believed in him. He assured Steve that everything was going to be fine and he would be going back home. His father told him how he felt when he was born. He told Steve how he imagined Steve's life would be. That he imagined him going off to college and playing football something Mr. Harmon didn't get to do. To Mr. Harmon Steve wasn't just another African American young man living in Harlem up to no good. He was his son that was going to beat the odds. Other books by Myers are Shooter, Bad Boy, and Handbook for Boys to name a few. All these books are similar to Monster in the way that they are all about young black men and the struggles they go through in everyday life. I would recommend any of these books to my students who have already read Monster. I learned that African American young men can easily go down the wrong road if not careful who they associate with. Steve was part of a conversation that lead him to be accused of being involved in a crime.