I checked this book out from my school library.
From Amazon:
Set during one of the most tumultuous years in recent American history, One Crazy Summer is the heartbreaking, funny tale of three girls who travel to Oakland, California, in 1968 in search of the mother who abandoned them. It's an unforgettable story told by a distinguished author of books for children and teens, Rita Williams-Garcia.
This was an amazing book. Told through the eyes of eleven-year-old Delphine, One Crazy Summer tells the story of three sisters traveling to California to spend a month with the mother who abandoned them on the day of the youngest sister's birth. They had never met her and knew nothing about her, other than what Big Ma, their grandmother, had told them. And none of it was good.
From the time they get off the plane, they find that their California fantasies of beach trips and visits to Disneyland are just that- fantasies. Their mother, Cecile is a poet and activist. On the first day of vacation, she sends the girls to a day camp run by the Black Panthers. Their education begins that day. Oakland, California is a far cry from their Brooklyn neighborhood, in more ways than one. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern must navigate their way from the way of life they've been taught by Big Ma, through the new and uncharted waters of the Black Panther movement in 1968 Oakland.
Cecile is distant, brusque, and refuses to allow the girls to enter her kitchen, making them eat take-out on the floor. Strangers visit her at night. Who is this mysterious woman who birthed them? What goes on behind her kitchen door?
Rita Williams-Garcia paints a historically accurate picture of 1968 California, of the civil rights movement as seen through the eyes of a young girl.
Read this book if.......
*you are interested in racial issues and the Civil Rights Movement
*you enjoy stories about sisters
*stories about meeting birth parents for the first time
That's a unique cover.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I think it goes with the times- 1968. Amazon shows another cover, but this is the one on my book. I think it fits the story more than the one on Amazon's version.
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