Williams-Garcia, R. (2010). One Crazy Summer. New York: Scholastic.
Summary
Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern live with their father and Big Ma in Brooklyn. During the summer of 1968, their father decides that the girls should visit their mother, Cecile, in Oakland, CA. Cecile left the family seven years earlier, just after seven-year-old Fern had been born. Hardly a figure of nurturing motherhood, poet Cecile bars the girls from her kitchen and sends them to get Chinese food for supper or to have breakfast at the People's Center. Run by the Black Panthers, the People's Center provides a day camp for children where Delphine and her sisters spend most of their vacation and learn about justice, injustice, assertiveness, and revolution. Furthermore, Cecile, known as Nzila (Inzilla to the girls, at first!) has a connection to this much-vilified group of militants. Though the unrest and political climate of 1968 play an indispensable role in the novel's action, the primary plot centers around the unconventional relationship of the girls to their mysterious mother and their attempt to connect.
Impression
Williams-Garcia skillfully endears readers to her three young heroines. Personally, I could find many elements of Delphine's character with which I could personally identify. However, one of the most fascinating aspects of this book lies in the characterization of Cecile. At first, the girls want to go home; I, too, wanted to be far away from this unpleasant person in the first half of the book. As the story progresses, however, I find myself drawn to Nzila with compassion and sympathy. While Williams-Garcia does not let Cecile off the hook as a mother, she very convincingly portrays a young woman who fell in over her head by having three daughters before she could rightly care for herself. By the story's conclusion, I wanted to hug her, too.
In addition, I have been prompted by this book to research more about the Black Panthers and their role in the Civil Rights movement. After my preliminary findings, I would be hard pressed to say that its founder, Huey Newton, aspired to the same moral high road that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., pursued (whatever their personal indiscretions); he seems to have had little compunction against inflicting physical harm to attain a political end. However, the Black Panthers' insistent demand for justice and firm commitment to empowering African-American people and communities has made a lasting mark in American society for the better.
Review
Engberg, G. (2010). One crazy summer [book review]. Booklist, 106(11), 61. Retrieved from Children's Literature Comprehensive Database
Starred Review* 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. Grades 4-7
Ideas for Use
Without a doubt, I would use this book in a middle school book display concerning Civil Rights, social justice, or the 1960's, mixed with nonfiction offerings. I would also use this book in studying the different approaches that King, Malcom X, Cesar Chavez, and the Black Panthers (among others) pursued in extending the boundaries of democratic ideals in America.
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