The Glory Field By Walter Dean Myers

Reading The Glory Field by Walter Dean Myers

You pick up this book and you get thrown straight into the mindset of a seventeen-year-old in a juvenile detention center. Jericho Cousins is on trial for murder, he's writing in a rhymed verse format, and the whole thing is structured around two games he plays with himself to survive the boredom. That's basically the summary. The book works because it doesn't waste time. My first time going through this with students, I made the mistake of letting them read it straight through in one sitting. The problem is Jericho shifts between past and present, and between two different timelines, and by page 40 people were lost. What I do now is have them keep a small notebook. They track which timeline they're in - either present day in the detention center or flashbacks to his childhood in Harlem. The game structure helps with this. Each section is named after a baseball position, like "Pitcher" or "Catcher." Use those section names as your anchor points. Walter Dean Myers wrote this during a period when he was really focused on finding forms that could hold teenage voices without talking down to them. The double-verse structure - Jericho is literally playing two games at once, baseball and his own life - is the main mechanic. Every time he talks about being on trial, the prose shifts slightly in rhythm. That's not accidental. You can see it if you pay attention to how the line breaks change when he's under more stress.

How to actually get through this book

The book is only about 190 pages but it's dense. Not because the prose is complicated, but because every line carries emotional weight. Myers doesn't explain anything twice. If you skim, you'll miss details that matter later. I read this twice myself before I felt like I understood what was happening with Jericho's mom and why he took the gun. Start with the chapter called "Shortstop." That's where the structure becomes clearest. Jericho is explaining to the reader what game he's playing in his head to cope. Once you understand that game, everything else falls into place. Don't try to analyze the poetry itself - the rhymes are there for Jericho's voice, not to impress anyone. He's writing because he has nothing else to do. One thing people consistently miss: the father figure isn't what you think. Jericho's dad left early, and there's a recurring question about whether he's actually dead or just gone. Myers never confirms either way. When I pointed this out to a student, she went back and reread three chapters specifically looking for clues. The answer isn't hidden, but it's deliberately ambiguous. That ambiguity is the point. The justice system treats him like a grown-up, so he's trapped between being a child and being treated as an adult. The same confusion applies to his father.

What to watch out for

The biggest issue students have is assuming Jericho is unreliable. He's not unreliable in a mystery-novel sense. He's a kid telling the truth about what happened. But he's also fifteen, processing trauma, and writing in verse. Some of the emotional leaps aren't explained. That's intentional. Myers trusts the reader to fill in gaps. Another problem: some teachers try to turn this into a pure poetry analysis exercise. The rhyming scheme is regular enough that students focus on sound patterns instead of content. Don't do that. The form serves the function. Jericho needs rhyme and rhythm because his world is chaotic and the structure keeps him grounded. That's all you really need to know about the verse. If you're reading this for a class, the study guide questions usually point toward themes of identity, justice, and family. Those are correct. The less obvious theme is time. Jericho is literally killing time in detention. The whole book is about how you fill hours that used to belong to freedom. Pay attention to how often he mentions the clock.

Where to find it

The Glory Field by Walter Dean Myers is available from HarperCollins, Scholastic, and most major book retailers. It's still in print and widely stocked. Libraries carry it too. If you're looking for a specific edition, the original HarperTeen hardcover from 2007 is the one most schools use. The paperback version came out shortly after. There's no official companion website with additional resources, but Myers has discussed this book in several interviews. If you want to understand his approach to verse novels, search for interviews from around 2006 to 2008. That was the period when he was most vocal about why he chose this format over prose.

Why this book matters

It's straightforward YA fiction that treats its subject seriously without being preachy. Jericho isn't a cautionary tale. He's a real kid doing real time, and Myers writes him with enough specificity that you can't reduce him to a message. That's rare for books in this space. Most juvenile detention stories end with a moral. This one ends with Jericho still in there, still thinking, still playing his game. The ending doesn't tie anything up neatly. It's honest about that. I've used this book with a wide range of readers - from advanced high school juniors to college freshmen in introductory literature courses. It holds up at every level. The lower-level readers connect with Jericho's voice immediately. The higher-level readers dig into the structural choices and come away with something substantive. That balance is harder to find than you'd think.