JERSEY CITY — On the rough-edged streets of Harlem in the 1940s, the young Walter Dean Myers knew better than to carry his library books where other children could see them.
“I was teased if I brought my books home,” said Mr. Myers, now a prolific and award-winning children’s book author. “I would take a paper bag to the library and put the books in the bag and bring them home. Not that I was that concerned about them teasing me — because I would hit them in a heartbeat. But I felt a little ashamed, having books.”
On Tuesday Mr. Myers, 74, will be named the national ambassador for young people’s literature, a sort of poet laureate of the children’s book world who tours the country for two years, speaking at schools and libraries about reading and literacy.
As an African-American man who dropped out of high school but built a successful writing career — largely because of his lifelong devotion to books — Mr. Myers said his message would be etched by his own experiences.
“I think that what we need to do is say reading is going to really affect your life,” he said in an interview at his book-cluttered house here in Jersey City, adding that he hoped to speak directly to low-income minority parents. “You take a black man who doesn’t have a job, but you say to him, ‘Look, you can make a difference in your child’s life, just by reading to him for 30 minutes a day.’ That’s what I would like to do.”
Mr. Myers is the third person to be appointed to the post, which was created in 2008 and is chosen by a committee formed by two groups: the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Children’s Book Council, a trade association for children’s book publishers. He succeeds Katherine Paterson, the novelist best known for her “Bridge to Terabithia,” and the first appointee, Jon Scieszka, author of books including “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.”  
Full piece here.