ONE CRAZY SUMMER

Bibliography:

Williams-Garcia, Rita. 2010. ONE CRAZY SUMMER. New York. Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 9780060760885

Plot Summary:

It is summer, 1968. Delphine and her younger sisters Vonetta and Fern are on their way from Brooklyn, New York to Oakland, California. They are to meet their mother Cecile, who left them and their father. The girls haven’t seen their mother since Fern “needed her milk,” Vonetta “needed to be picked up,” and Delphine “was four going on five.” The three sisters cannot wait to arrive in California. They are anxious to visit Disneyland, meet movie stars, and maybe, learn the truth about the missing pieces of their past. But, their mother, now a poet, seems too busy to fulfill the girls’ dreams. She makes them eat Chinese takeout dinners, forbids them to enter her kitchen, and never explains the stranger visitors with Afros and black berets. Instead she sends her daughters to spend all day at the People’s Center, which is run by the Black Panther. There they learn more about their mother and the Black Panther’s revolutionary ideas. There also, the bond of sisterhood that connects them is strengthened.

Critical Analysis:

ONE CRAZY SUMMER is a book about a child’s perspective of social change and the Black Panther movement. Delphine is learning about the world around her through important events, such as Bobby Hutton’s assassination, and historical figures such as Huey Newton.

At first glance, this book is about issues: identity, the Civil Rights Movement, sisterhood, and one’s responsibility to family. But above all it is a book about a summer of discovery. As Delphine grows to understand the complexities of the world around her, she learns that the reasons her mother left are equally complex. By the end of the book Delphine accepts that she will never have the daughter-mother relationship she so desires. But, she does come to understand the reasons for Cecile’s choices.

All three sisters, Delphine, Vonetta, Fern, have strong, independent personalities. Their relationship is like any other among siblings: there are fights and disagreements, but also moments of love and caring. These leitmotifs are unchangeable through time. Though the story’s protagonist – Delphine - is mature for a girl of eleven, she does and says things that are beyond her age, deep down she is just a young child who has a huge, unfair burden.

The style of writing allows the telling of a good story sprinkled with social commentary. It is a thought provoking story that is fun and heartbreaking.  

  

Experts Reviews:

2011 Coretta Scott King Award Winner

2011 Newbery Honor Book

2011 Scott O’Dell Prize for Historical Fiction

2010 National Book Award Finalist

Junior Library Guild Selection

Texas Library Association Best Book for 2010

Set during a pivotal moment in African American history, this vibrant novel shows the subtle ways that political movements affect personal lives; but just as memorable is the finely drawn, universal story of children reclaiming a reluctant parent’s love.

Booklist

Each girl has a distinct response to her motherless state, and Williams-Garcia provides details that make each characterization crystal clear. The depiction of the time is well done, and while the girls are caught up in the difficulties of adults, their resilience is celebrated and energetically told with writing that snaps off the page.
School Library Journal

Connections:

Invite children to imagine that they are one of the Cecile's daughters and ask them to write a letter to Cecile after their return to Brooklyn.

Read some poems by Langston Hughest:

DREAMS

COMES THE COLORED HOUR

LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN

What would Delphine thing about this poems?

Read other Books by Williams-Garcia:

BLUE TIGHTS.

FAST TALK ON A SLOW TRACK. 

LIKE SISTERS ON THE HOMEFRONT.

EVERY TIME A RAINBOW DIES. 

NO LAUGHTER HERE.