If you’re anywhere near middle-school age, chances are you’ve read “Hoops.” Or “Monster” or “Scorpions.” Or any of the many other books by Walter Dean Myers.

His newest -and 80th – book came out this month. It’s called “Here in Harlem,” and, unlike the gritty young-adult fiction he’s famed for, it’s a book of poems about his hometown, and the people -students, teachers, jazzmen – who made it tick.

“I have no memory of my mother at all,” Myers told The Post. Born 67 years ago, in tiny Martinsburg, W. Va., he was a year and a half old when she died. His father had seven children and was too poor to care for them, so the Dean family of Harlem adopted Walter when he was 3. (He later took their name by way of thanks.)

It was years before he saw his brothers and sisters and father again.

Still, said Myers, a father of three who lives in Jersey City, if he hadn’t moved, he probably wouldn’t have become a writer:

“I had such a good experience with reading and books in the New York City school system,” he says.

“I loved Yeats, Shakespeare, what have you. When I first began to write, I wrote odes to everything,” he says with a laugh.

“Then I got older and discovered the fiction of James Baldwin. That gave me permission, so to speak, to write about African-American life, Harlem and the experiences of the poor.”

He’s been writing ever since. Recently, several dozen fans – Kathie Nolan’s eighth-graders at the Demarest (N.J.) Middle School – had a bunch of questions for him. Here’s how he answered them:

Q: Are most of your books about your own life? Which ones?

A: Most of them are based on my own life or my own world view. “Somewhere in the Darkness” is about a boy who meets his father for the first time when he’s a teenager. I met my father when he moved to my neighborhood.

Q: Who were your role models growing up?

A: I wanted to be an athlete – that’s what I saw growing up. Sugar Ray Robinson would come around our block and box with the kids, Willie Mays would play stickball. I wanted to be a basketball player, but I left school at 17 to join the Army. When I got out, I just struggled to make a living. I worked at the post office, I worked tearing down buildings, I worked as a messenger – I was a twister in an electrical-cable factory. A big cable came out of the machine and I had to grab the cable and twist it.

Q: What inspired your first book?

A: I saw a contest for children’s books writers. I entered the picture book category, not knowing exactly what a picture book was. I did the text -about father who takes a group of children to Central Park, and one child asked, “Where does the day go, at night?” And each child came up with an answer. The name of the book was “Where Does the Day Go”? It came out in 1969.

Q: Did you take writing classes – and did they help?

A: I took a class with Lajos Egri, a Hungarian writer, in New York. He liked me very much and was very encouraging. I couldn’t afford to take any more classes, and he let me stay for free. Years later, I took a writing class at the New School and was kicked out. The guy said I just didn’t have the ability. He was very apologetic and said, “Some people have it and some don’t.” But I kept writing.

Q: How many revisions do you go through before you’re finished?

A: Usually four or five. Before I begin a book, if it’s a novel, I’ll go through hip-hop magazines and pick out pictures of my characters, then my wife will put them on a large piece of oaktag and make a montage. Sometimes, she’ll even create a scene I’ll tell her about. That montage goes on my wall behind the computer. So whenever I sit down to work, I look up and there are all my characters, looking up at me.

Q: Have you ever been censored?

A: No, but I’ve been banned. “Fallen Angels” is one of the most banned books in the country, because it’s about a company in Vietnam and they curse a lot. When you go into the Army and you’re 17 or 18, they need to separate you from your civilian influences and make you willing to kill people. They demonize the enemy with language, and there’s an awful lot of cursing going on.

Q: If you had one chance to change something about the world, what would you do?

A: Oy vey! [He laughs.] You know, I would give all children philosophy courses, because so many children don’t understand that you have to make decisions early in life. We sort of let kids drift. When I go to places like Rikers Island and see so many kids who’ve drifted into lives of crime, I wish someone had told them that education is a necessity – that how you conduct your life at 15 or 16 is going to affect you for as long as you live. There’s no do-over.

That’s why, in my books, I write about the moral decisions kids have to make. Some people think I’m preachy – and I agree!