One Crazy Summer

One Crazy Summer

By Rita Williams-Garcia

28 ratings 33 reviews 55 followers
Interest LevelReading LevelReading A-ZATOSWord Count
Grades 4 - 8Grades 3 - 8W4.645483

In this Newbery Honor novel, New York Times bestselling author Rita Williams-Garcia tells the story of three sisters who travel to Oakland, California, in 1968 to meet the mother who abandoned them.

Eleven-year-old Delphine is like a mother to her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern. She's had to be, ever since their mother, Cecile, left them seven years ago for a radical new life in California. But when the sisters arrive from Brooklyn to spend the summer with their mother, Cecile is nothing like they imagined. While the girls hope to go to Disneyland and meet Tinker Bell, their mother sends them to a day camp run by the Black Panthers. Unexpectedly, Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern learn much about their family, their country, and themselves during one truly crazy summer.

This moving, funny novel won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and the Coretta Scott King Award and was a National Book Award Finalist. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern's story continues in P.S. Be Eleven and Gone Crazy in Alabama.

Readers who enjoy Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham and Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming will find much to love in One Crazy Summer. This novel was the first featured title for Marley D’s Reading Party, launched after the success of #1000BlackGirlBooks. Maria Russo, in a New York Times list of "great kids' books with diverse characters," called it "witty and original."

Publisher: HarperCollins Childrens Book Group
Published on 1/5/2012
Binding: Paperback

Book Reviews (34)

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This book is really good. I loved it! I can't remember what really happened but I just remember(all I remember) is that it was good.

REally good so far

Thanks for reading it to us i liked it a lot!!!!!!!!

One Crazy Summer is about three sisters who travel to Oakland, California to visit their mother who left them when they were young. It takes place in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement. Their poet mother is not very friendly to the girls and doesn't seem to want them around. The sisters spend their days at a community center where they meet and are influenced by the Black Panthers. I loved the author's style of writing. She described events and characters in such a vivid and unique way. I found myself thinking that I would have never thought to describe things the way she did! It really created some memorable images for me. I also liked that it was a historical fiction book because I learned a lot about the Black Panthers.

This is a good book.

snew snew

One Crazy Summer is a great book! Is takes place in the civil rights movement. The three girls go to there real moms house. And there mother dosen't really care about them. You can figure out the rest!

it told about some kid in school life, friends which everybody will hope to read, agree and live with it!

everything is so unreal its like the weirdest story ever yet so good at the same time it so exiting and apealing as you readmore

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