One Crazy Summer

After I heard author Rita Williams-Garcia speak at a NYC book event, I knew I had to read this book, even if it was for kids. After all, in 1968, I was the same age as the main character, Delphine, and from Brooklyn, just like her. That year, the Vietnam War, antiwar protests, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kenedy punctuated headlines.

Delphine and her younger sisters make a trek to California to visit their estranged mother. Instead of meeting Mickey and friends at Disney, they find Mom works for Huey, Bobby, and the Black Panthers!… show more.

I have been recommending this book non-stop since I first read it in 2010. It’s an incredibly powerful and moving (and also funny) story about an eleven-year-old girl, Delphine, dealing with the anger she feels toward her mother, who abandoned her and her younger sisters to join the Black Power movement in 1960s Oakland, CA.

No matter how many times I revisit it, this book taps deeply into the messy and difficult feelings I had about my own parents when I was eleven.

My favorite MG historical novels all seem to have certain things in common. A setting that offers a poignant slice of history. Challenging family dynamics. Protagonists called to be stronger than they ever imagined. One Crazy Summer checks every box and adds a bonus of bittersweet humor and an empathy-rich plot. My heart ached for all of the characters: the little sisters, the Black Panthers, Big Mama and the father, the mother who chose art over mothering, and Delphine, stuck in the middle of them all. A book like this, one that’s able to offer a deeply-immersive experience of slipping… show more.

This novel carried me to a world I'd never known - Oakland, California, in 1963. I loved the humor and quickly came to love the characters. What intrigued me was the portrayal of the Black Panthers and their work with children during that summer. The book offered a new and fascinating look into their world. It won both the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and the Coretta Scott King Award. Well worth a read!

I fell in love with eleven-year-old Delphine right away. It’s 1968 and she and her two younger sisters fly from NYC to California to meet the mother that abandoned them years ago. Like always, Delphine must look out for her sisters because they can’t count on their mom for that. The characters in this book come to life in such a believable way, from the kids at the community center run by the local Black Panthers to the grandmother back in New York whose scoldings and values are forever running through Delphine’s mind. From start to finish, this book is… show more.