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.

Brown Girl Dreaming Review by Dana G. Williams

1.  BIBLIOGRAPHY
Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. Nancy Paulsen Books: New York, 2014. ISBN 9780399252518

2.  PLOT SUMMARY
Author Jacqueline Woodson traces her childhood history moving from Ohio to South Carolina to New York City through a plethora of free verse poems that illustrate a beautiful narrative of personal experiences that molded her into a writer at a very young age. Young Woodson introduces us to the the south she celebrates, the influence of family on her growth and how she survived frequent separation from parents, siblings, extended family and friends. 

3.  CRITICAL ANALYSIS
In Brown Girl Dreaming Jacqueline Woodson's autobiography, written in free verse, illustrates common themes in the writer's life: transition, loss, and exploration. Woodson's writing flows from page to page like a perfectly profound diary of a young girl's experience growing up while her basic needs were often in flux and death and worry were frequently knocking at her door. Her poem, "One Place" expresses Jacqueline's worry that her young brother might never come home to live with them after suffering from lead poisoning. Woodson's verse elevates the reader's anxiety and fear for the young boy:

"For a long time, our little brother/ goes back and forth to the hospital, his body/ weak from the lead, his brain/ not doing what a brain is supposed to do./ We don't understand why he's so small, has tubes/ coming from his arms, sleeps and sleeps.../ when we visit him." The imagery paints a sad and upsetting picture of the very real frailties of her baby brother. As a reader, I feared for him, for her and what the loss of that child would do to her world.

In essence, Woodson spends her biography being pulled away from people she loves: her father in Ohio, her mother when she leaves the children with grandparents in South Carolina to look for work in New York, her grandparents, her Uncle Robert, her Aunt Kay, etc.

The only reassurance Woodson is able to give herself in these situations is that she is loved by each and every one of those people, but somehow life isn't easy for them. Her family's religion as Jehovah's Witnesses focuses on having faith through hard work and prayer. In the end, Woodson's experience lead her write the poem "What I Believe," which expresses how her experiences have allowed her to have faith in more than just religion and in the many people who have influenced her life. "I believe in God and evolution./ I believe in the Bible and the Qur'an./ I believe in Christmas and the New World./ I believe that there is good in each of us/ no matter who we are or what we believe in." The poem and the sound of the words brought me to a place of self-acceptance and inspiration to seek out a life that fits me rather than seeing myself as someone who needs a place to fit into.

The most affectionate portrayals Woodson saves for her life in South Carolina. Her descriptions of weather, smells, the neighbors and her life there, bring the reader back to an earlier time. It was for me, nostalgic for my own childhood spent in a slower-paced city, when children were allowed to roam free and explore the world unattended.

Jacqueline's portrayal of her interest and determination to be a writer and her complete success at the profession as an adult are inspiring. The author's note in the back of Brown Girl Dreaming focuses on the research and family who helped her to write the book, as well as her appreciation for the long history of storytelling within her family that helped her make connections between the past and the present as a woman and as a writer.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
Newbery Honor 
National Book Award for Young People's Literature
Coretta Scott King Award
NAACP Image Award

From Booklist
"What is this book about? In an appended author's note, Woodson says it best: "my past, my people, my memories, my story." The resulting memoir in verse is a marvel, as it turns deeply felt remembrances of Woodson's preadolescent life into art, through memories of her homes in Ohio, South Carolina, and, finally, New York City, and of her friends and family." 

From Horn Book
"A memoir-in-verse so immediate that readers will feel they are experiencing the author's childhood right along with her... Most notably of all, perhaps, we trace her development as a nascent writer, from her early, overarching love of stories through her struggles to learn to read through the thrill of her first blank composition book to her realization that 'words are [her] brilliance.' The poetry here sings: specific, lyrical, and full of imagery. An extraordinary -- indeed brilliant -- portrait of a writer as a young girl."  

5. CONNECTIONS
Other books by Jacqueline Woodson for children:

• Feathers. ISBN 9780142415504
• The Other Side. ISBN 9780399231162
• This is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration. ISBN 9780399239861

Other biographies told with poetry:

• Alexander, Kwame. Out of Wonder: Poems about Celebrating Poets. ISBN 9780763680947
• Katz, Susan. The President's Stuck in the Bathtub: Poems About Presidents. ISBN 9780547182216
• Shane, Ntozake. Ellington Was Not a Street. ISBN 9780689828843

It's true that many poems tell emotional stories, but some of them also share history in a vibrant method of storytelling. Introducing children to biographies through poetry is a novel way to bridge the gap between fiction and non-fiction and to illustrate writing style and methods.

Creating a poetry-based free writing activity where children can focus on the lives of their heroes (living or dead) lets them be in the driver's seat to showcase what they know about poetry. Reading these biography books allows them to see and hear different ways writers tell historical stories about their lives or the lives of others and the people who influenced them.