Review of One Crazy Summer

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Williams-Garcia, Rita. One Crazy Summer. New York: Amistad, 2010. ISBN 9780060760885

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Three sisters travel from New York City to Oakland, California, to visit their estranged mother in 1968. The girls must learn how to navigate a new city without the help of their seemingly distant and unreliable parent, whose connections to the Black Panther party and life as a revolutionary poet during the Civil Rights Movement end up being the lifeline that tethers them to their mother. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
In 1968, three sisters, Delphine, in fifth grade, Fern, in fourth grade, and Vonetta, in second grade, are sent from the only home they've ever known with their father and grandmother in New York City to spend the summer with their mother, Cecile, in Oakland, California.

Cecile is not a warm person. She doesn't cook. She doesn't hug. And she makes it clear that she doesn't want the girls there: "I didn't send for you. Didn't want you in the first place. Should have gone to Mexico to get rid of you when I had the chance" (26-27).

Not only was it an unwelcoming greeting to the girls, who don't really remember their mother, but it was a vital introduction that Williams-Garcia gives the reader into the realities of American life in the late 1960s with harsh reality that to end a pregnancy women had to travel to Mexico pre-Roe v. Wade to get a medical procedure.

Cecile lives in a house down the street from a Black Panther center, where the girls are able to get a free breakfast every morning and learn about social justice in a Black Panther program that was run like a day camp. The girls were taught by Sister Mukumbu about how the goal of living was to improve the situation for all subjugated people. "Revolving. Revolution. Revolutionary. Constant Turning. Making things change," she tells the class (72). Historical figures like Huey Newton and Che Guevara are taught. Williams-Garcia also makes references to other important civil rights leaders including, Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bobby Hutton, Cassius Clay, and the Kennedys.

Oakland is a strange new world for the girls. Cecile gives them money for Chinese food every night, and Delphine grows up fast realizing that without a stable parent in place, she will need to take on the role of mother. The kids fend for themselves in the neighborhood against bullies, who don't like that little Vonetta carries a white-colored doll in their predominantly black neighborhood. Delphine's innate ability as a caretaker shines through as an affront to her mother's revolutionary lifestyle. "She probably hated my father's plain face on me. That the plain way about him was the plain way about me. I didn't know about blowing dust and clearing paths. I knew about hot-combing thick heads of hair and ironing pleated wool skirts for school" (76).

Delphine rises for the sake of her sisters, and in doing so learns from the Black Panther camp the benefits of activism, the strength of her blackness, and how to reach her mother's heart through recognizing her sacrifice and struggles with being "woke" in a time when white people in San Francisco took pictures of the three little black girls like they were animals in a zoo.

Williams-Garcia poured a lot of historical framework into One Crazy Summer, but it's the highly tenuous and authentic relationship between the girls and their mother that ties the book together. Williams-Garcia acknowledges many of her influences and role models when she wrote the book, including, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, etc.

Children today may also realize how much less responsibility and freedom they have to wander than children growing up in earlier generations had at a much younger age. Cecile's history of homelessness and poverty shine a light on the social inequity and racism upon which America was founded and that bigotry and racial oppression that continues to thrive in our country generation after generation.

Williams-Garcia made me loves these girls. Their ability to endure discomfort and uncertainty and stand up for family and community makes One Crazy Summer a noble and thoughtful read about a critical time in American history that still resonates today with the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement and the social justice action of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union. I am excited that she wrote two sequels to the book and that the girls' stories live on.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S) and AWARDS
Newbery Medal Honor Book
National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature
Coretta Scott King Award Winner, 2011
Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction

From School Library Journal
"Emotionally challenging and beautifully written, this book immerses readers in a time and place and raises difficult questions of cultural and ethnic identity and personal responsibility." 

From Kirkus Reviews
"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." 

5. CONNECTIONS
Other books featuring Delphine and her family by Rita Williams-Garcia

• P.S. Be Eleven. ISBN 9780061938641
• Gone Crazy in Alabama. ISBN 9780062215895

Other historical fiction chapter books about African American life in the United States:

• Curtis, Christopher Paul. The Watsons Go to Birmingham — 1963. ISBN 9780385382946
• Draper, Sharon M. Stella by Starlight. ISBN 9781442494985
• Taylor, Mildred D. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. ISBN 9780142401125

In the book, Cecile is a powerful poet. Her emotional connection to her art teaches her children that words have meaning, particularly through poetry. Reread Cecile's poem at the end of the book, and have children try their hand writing a poem about their lives. What important words do your students have to say about their own histories and things they see going on in the world that effect them?

For additional resources and historical information on black history in the United States, be sure to explore museums in your area. Museums are a great place to see about forming connections related to historical exhibits. For example, in Austin, where I live, we are home to the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential library, which has many exhibits and additional information on the Civil Rights movement. In addition, the Smithsonian and the U.S. Library of Congress have a number of materials and exhibits online, if field trips are not an affordable option for your school or library program budgets.