Hey, what’s up? I recently read One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. It’s a pretty good book and I like the story. It’s about three girls who live in New York without their mother who moved away to California when they were younger. This particular summer they are going to visit her and they expect her to be so happy and joyful to see them. It’s actually quite the opposite.
Their mother’s name is Cecile, and she acts like she doesn’t want them and doesn’t allow the oldest sister named Delphine to cook dinner. Instead, they have to get take-out every night. During the summer the three sisters named Delphine, Fern, and Vonetta, attend a Black Panthers summer camp where they learn about Black Panther tactics and customs and begin to feel apart of them. At first they thought they (the Black Panthers) were crazy, much like they thought of their mother. Over the story they begin to get used to and like Oakland.
Their mother gets arrested for helping the Black Panthers print flyers in the kitchen which is part of why she won’t let the girls in for a while. She also prints her poetry she writes in there and doesn’t want to be disturbed during her work. Eventually she starts allowing Delphine come in and make dinner for her mother and sisters. By the end of their stay, Delphine has a heart to heart conversation with her mother in which they connect and talk for the first time which builds a strong bond between them. A bond so strong that when they were about to get on the airplane to go back to New York, they hugged their mother for the first time before getting on. They hated Oakland at first but by the end of the book, they want to go back again the next summer. All in all I liked this book and found it really hard to put down once I got into the bulk of the story, though the beginning is a little boring.
~~Z.J.
Their mother’s name is Cecile, and she acts like she doesn’t want them and doesn’t allow the oldest sister named Delphine to cook dinner. Instead, they have to get take-out every night. During the summer the three sisters named Delphine, Fern, and Vonetta, attend a Black Panthers summer camp where they learn about Black Panther tactics and customs and begin to feel apart of them. At first they thought they (the Black Panthers) were crazy, much like they thought of their mother. Over the story they begin to get used to and like Oakland.
Their mother gets arrested for helping the Black Panthers print flyers in the kitchen which is part of why she won’t let the girls in for a while. She also prints her poetry she writes in there and doesn’t want to be disturbed during her work. Eventually she starts allowing Delphine come in and make dinner for her mother and sisters. By the end of their stay, Delphine has a heart to heart conversation with her mother in which they connect and talk for the first time which builds a strong bond between them. A bond so strong that when they were about to get on the airplane to go back to New York, they hugged their mother for the first time before getting on. They hated Oakland at first but by the end of the book, they want to go back again the next summer. All in all I liked this book and found it really hard to put down once I got into the bulk of the story, though the beginning is a little boring.
~~Z.J.
