Walter Dean Myers

Five devoted friends become landlords and try to make their Harlem neighborhood a better place to live. If you were looking for a real ghetto dump, you couldn't beat The Stratford Arms. There was Askia Ben Kenobi throwing karate chops upstairs, Petey Darden making booze downstairs, and Mrs. Brown grieving for Jack Johnson, who'd died for the third time in a month--and not a rent payer in the bunch. Still, when Paul Williams and the Action Group got...