Walter Dean Myers’ latest novel, The Glory...

Walter Dean Myers’ latest novel, The Glory Field (Scholastic Books: $14.95; ages 12 and up), is a hefty five-part saga about five generations of an African-American family, spanning more than two centuries.

The story begins in 1753 aboard a ship carrying Africans in shackles from Sierra Leone to a fictional island off South Carolina’s coast. For people transported across the ocean as slaves, islands like these, Myers says, were the equivalent of Ellis Island to whites during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Surviving the terrible journey and their equally treacherous life as plantation slaves, the fictional Lewises finally come into land they can call their own after the Civil War (the holdings include a tiny cemetery for their people, called the “Glory Field”). After the turn of the century one son, Elijah Lewis, goes north, leaving behind his beloved island to escape the wrath of local whites looking to cause him serious trouble. The section of the book detailing his teen-age daughter Luvenia’s struggle to better herself during the 1930s in Chicago is inspiring--and Luvenia’s mentor, Miss Etta, is a captivating, multidimensional character.

The story that began with ancestors in leg irons eventually rounds itself out in Harlem (the author’s hometown), with a look at the conflict experienced by a contemporary middle-class black teen-ager who must decide how much of himself he can extend to help a crack-addicted, homeless cousin. We agonize with him and celebrate his growing awareness of the importance of embracing family (no matter how down on their luck) and history (no matter how painful), when he discovers the leg irons the family kept: “In the quiet of his room, on a day in which the rain beat with a fury against his Harlem window, he lifted the shackles, felt their weight, ran his fingers along the smoothness of the well-worn iron. He had even thought about putting them around his ankles, but knew that it would never be the same. It wasn’t his to experience, only his to know about, to imagine how hard it had been. The weight of the shackles gave substance to all the people who had worn them, and who had triumphed in spite of them. They gave weight, even, to those who had been broken by them, or by the invisible shackles they had found along their way.”

Though it’s a good story, the overall quality of the storytelling here is less than we’ve come to expect from Myers, author of “Motown and Didi,” “Fallen Angels” and several dozen other books--four of which have garnered the Coretta Scott King Award, and two Newbery Honors.

Also worth note: Another book by Walter Dean Myers, called Darnell Rock Reporting (Delacorte: $14.95; ages 8-12), in which a ne’er-do-well middle-schooler redeems himself by writing a muckraking article for the local paper. . . . In Uncle Smoke Stories: Nehawka Tales of Coyote the Trickster (Alfred A. Knopf: $15; ages 8-12) author Roger Welsch, a white writer who has been adopted by the Omaha people of Nebraska, spins fireside yarns with Aesopian morals, all based on Native American traditions.. . . . “All I know is that I went out one day as a cat and came back as a woman,” says the strange ginger-haired heroine of Minnie, by Annie M.G. Schmidt (Milkweed Editions: $14.95 hardcover; $6.95 paperback; ages 8-12) ; translated from the author’s original Dutch, this is a sweet and funny tale about metamorphosis.