Reviews

All the Right Stuff by Walter Dean Myers

aprilbooksandwine's review against another edition

4.0

The thing that I love best about reading a book by Walter Dean Myers is that I get a different story every time. While I may not always love that story or find it to be the best ever, I like that Myers is not a one note author. All The Right Stuff is no different, it was a story I had not read before. There is no romance. There’s not exactly a gang. The main character, Paul isn’t exactly having a huge dilemma. Rather, All The Right Stuff is an examination of the social contract, you know stuff you learned in Social Studies during the Enlightenment unit (I kind of want to trot my BS in social studies education out), thus making it stand out for me, even among other multicultural books.
Read the rest of my review here link goes live 10/4/12

foreveryoungadult's review against another edition

Graded By: Erin
Cover Story: Not Too Shabby
BFF Charm: Meh and a HELL YES!
Swoonworthy Scale: 1
Talky Talk: Can You Dig It?
Bonus Factors: Soup, The Social Contract
Relationship Status: Let's Do The Required Reading For Social Studies Together

Read the full book report here.

kevinhendricks's review against another edition

2.0

It's a Socratic dialogue about the social contract, the unwritten rules that determine our behavior, wrapped around the barest of plots. I'm not a big fan of philosophy and I love a good plot, so this one didn't do it for me. In some ways it reminds me of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with the philosophic conversation broken up by manual labor (in this case, preparing soup). But I want a story that actually tells a story.

mastercabs's review against another edition

3.0

I taught this book, and I suspect that it WDM wrote it with the intention of it being taught to late middle/early high school students. It is as easy a read as it can be with Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls being bandied about by the main characters. If I teach this book again, I will teach it as an introduction to our civics unit for ELA I. I don't think it worked as a hook book for getting my students into reading. A few have really cleaved to the ideas put forward and the way that they are being put forward, but I think overall this lacks the teeth that it needs to really engage kids.
Yes, many of my students really related to Paul's relationship with his father (or lack thereof) and his desire to understand the world around him. However, there isn't as much immediacy in his story as there is in, say, Keisha's. Walter Dean Myers wrote so much that kids can really latch onto - this isn't bad, but there are better offerings covering similar territory.

ebabybibliogato's review against another edition

1.0

Ok, I might not be the target audience for this book, but I have read many YA novels I still connected with while this one felt like it was hitting me over the head with its message. I listened to the audio while at work. Afterwords I felt like if the term 'social contract' was said one more time I was going to barf. Also, the summary on the back made a budding friendship with a girl seem like a large part of the story, but I didn't find that to be the case at all. I appreciate what the book was trying to do, but the delivery was not something I enjoyed. Too straight forward, felt more like a lecture than a moral that I would have to think about.

Few days later: I just realized that I've read another book by this author: Monster. I read it when I was a teenager and I remember really liking it. All the Right Stuff must have just not been my cup of tea.

shelovestoread2's review against another edition

2.0

This is my second Walter Dean Myers book I read and I have to say I didn't like this one, I had to DNF it. It started out good it seemed as though it would had some substance about Paul's father getting murdered but it didnt. 


Paul is assigned to work at a local soup kitchen with the owner Elijah. Elijah is a older man of his time which I didnt mind for the story but all Elijah wanted to do was talk about a social contract. Every chapter up until where I stopped at was all about the social contract. It got a little confusing because Elijah would use ham sandwiches and knocking people to get what you want apart of the social contract.


I just feel as far as I got into the story nothing happened and that's why I had to DNF. I was waiting for something to be said something to happen to understand more about Paul but that never happened.


Maybe oneday I'll try this one again I'll still continue to read Water Dean Myers books but this one didnt do it for me.

knel15's review against another edition

2.0

Paul gets a job in a soup kitchen the same summer his father dies in a store robbery gone wrong. Elijah, the owner of the Soup Emporium, begins a conversation about the social contract and the different roles people play in their communities. Paul begins getting different people's opinions on the social contract, from Keisha, the teen mother who is looking to use her basketball skills to get out of Harlem, to Sly, the notorious Harlem big shot. Everyone Paul meets has their own opinions of the social contract and how people should relate to one another.

"But in the end, we learn we can forgive most people. The cushion of mortality makes their wrongdoing seem less dark, and whatever roads they traveled seem less foolhardy."

What exactly is the social contract and why should Paul even care?


All The Right Stuff creates an interesting discussion of the social contract. It is a Socratic dialogue that can come off as didactic at times. The characters are well developed and the pace of the book is on the slower side. It would be a fantastic book for anyone interested in philosophy and a person's place in their community.

tellmeyarns's review

2.0

The major part of the this novel was the theory of the social contract, a longtime debate on a person's natural and legal rights. While thought provoking, there was very little plot development that made me want to keep reading. Not my favorite WDM.