Module 5: One Crazy Summer

Citation: Williams-Garcia, R. (2010). One crazy summer. New York, NY: Amistad.

Summary: Told through the eyes of 11 year old Delphine who, along with her two younger sisters Vonetta and Fern, get sent in the summer in 1968 to spend time with their mother who left after the youngest sister was born. From the beginning the girls feel unwelcome and their mother, Cecile makes it known they are a bother to her daily routine of writing poems and printing them in her kitchen workspace. She is unmotherly to them and every day they are sent to the Black Panther's free breakfast program in Oakland.  They spend their days at the community center doing activities provided by Black Panthers and learning more and more each day. Hesitantly, the girls go often and although they do not share the views of their peers and women who run the camp they begin to understand the power of and lessons from the Black Panthers. Through time their opinions change and when the ending presents a moment in which their mother's attitude towards them changes it paints a happy ending.

Impression: Peace, Love and Historical Read!

Yep, this one is a peaceful read because of the warm fuzzy feeling you get after the girls and their non-emotion mother finally make that connection, not to mention it is all told through the reader learning a little more about the Black Panther’s movement in history.  I love how the girls’ strong characters are beautifully envisioned through the Williams-Garcia’s descriptions. This is one well written book!

Reviews: Gr 4-7--It is 1968, and three black sisters from Brooklyn have been put on a California-bound plane by their father to spend a month with their mother, a poet who ran off years before and is living in Oakland. It's the summer after Black Panther founder Huey Newton was jailed and member Bobby Hutton was gunned down trying to surrender to the Oakland police, and there are men in berets shouting "Black Power" on the news. Delphine, 11, remembers her mother, but after years of separation she's more apt to believe what her grandmother has said about her, that Cecile is a selfish, crazy woman who sleeps on the street. At least Cecile lives in a real house, but she reacts to her daughters' arrival without warmth or even curiosity. Instead, she sends the girls to eat breakfast at a center run by the Black Panther Party and tells them to stay out as long as they can so that she can work on her poetry. Over the course of the next four weeks, Delphine and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, spend a lot of time learning about revolution and staying out of their mother's way. 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. With memorable characters (all three girls have engaging, strong voices) and a powerful story, this is a book well worth reading and rereading.

Markson, T. (2010). One crazy summer. School Library Journal, 56(3), 170.

Eleven-year-old Delphine has only a few fragmented memories of her mother, Cecile, a poet who wrote verses on walls and cereal boxes, played smoky jazz records, and abandoned the family in Brooklyn after giving birth to her third daughter. In the summer of 1968, Delphine’s father decides that seeing Cecile is “something whose time had come,” and Delphine boards a plane with her sisters to Cecile’s home in Oakland. What they find there is far from their California dreams of Disneyland and movie stars. “No one told y’all to come out here,” Cecile says. “No one wants you out here making a mess, stopping my work.” Like the rest of her life, Cecile’s work is a mystery conducted behind the doors of the kitchen that she forbids her daughters to enter. For meals, Cecile sends the girls to a Chinese restaurant or to the local, Black Panther–run community center, where Cecile is known as Sister Inzilla and where the girls begin to attend youth programs. Regimented, responsible, strong-willed Delphine narrates in an unforgettable voice, but each of the sisters emerges as a distinct, memorable character, whose hard-won, tenuous connections with their mother build to an aching, triumphant conclusion. 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.

Engberg, G. (2010). One crazy summer. Booklist, 106(11), 61. .

Use in Library: -A great book to pair with a history lesson about movements.  A guest speaker could also be invited to speak to students about the life and times of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.  This would help students to understand and make the connections that the time period in which this story takes place in was not that long ago.