One Crazy Summer

Excellent! This was very real - the situations, every character, the relationships and interactions, the history (yes,I remember it well). The story was emotionally compelling for me with no exaggeration or melodrama - just real life, very well written. Delphine was a wonderful character and I'll remember her well. ( )

It is 1968, and Delphine and her two sisters have been put on a plane from Brooklyn to California to spend a month with their mother, a poet who abandoned the family years ago. During this crazy summer, the girls not only learn about their mother and the politics of this time period, but they each grow individually and come to better understand each other.

I met Ms. Williams-Garcia when she spoke to my graduate class on Adolescent Literature. She shared her writing process and in particular how she creates dialogue for her characters. That is what really stood out for me in this book. You can hear the voices of the characters so clearly. She captures angry, shy, stubborn, sarcastic, and defiant so beautifully. This book is certainly worthy of all of its awards. ( )

4Q, 4P. This book follows a month in the life of three girls from Brooklyn who travel to Oakland to meet their estranged mother, a poet involved with social activism and the Black Panthers. The story is quick and engaging and does a good job of putting the events into a larger social context, no trivial task given that the protagonist's limited interest in her mother's world (at least, at the start). This would be a great book to educate kids about 60's activism; it gives a great child's eye view of the what it was like to be growing up in that place and time. Good introduction to the concept of privilege--the term isn't used, of course, but some of Delphine's comments, such as her having to be constantly aware and monitoring how the the white majority is perceiving her and her sisters, provide excellent and elegant examples. ( )

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia covers the summer trip of Delphine and her younger sisters, Vonette and Fern to visit their mother in Oakland, California. Big Ma has declared it time for Cecile to act like a mother to her daughters, years after leaving them, if even for a few weeks in the summer.

Delphine (the oldest, and narrator) expects the California of television and movies — beaches, Disneyland and summer heat. She gets instead, Oakland — fog, hills and the beach is a long bus ride away. She also gets a distant mother, greasy food from the local Chinese takeout, and days spent at the Center — run by the local Black Panthers. It is nothing Delphine expected or wants. All she wants to do is take her sisters home.

One Crazy Summer is one of those books I'd like to see made part of the California curriculum. Although it's historical fiction, it touches on so many issues and themes that are still relevant. It's also a well crafted story with believable, positive characters.

The sequel, P.S. Be Eleven comes out later in 2013. ( )