One Crazy Summer Review
Reviewed by Madeline McElroy (age 9) for Reader Views (05/10)
This is a story about three young girls that will make you laugh and cry. Their names are Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern. They live in Brooklyn, New York. Delphine is the oldest followed by Vonetta and then Fern. After Fern was about a year old, their mom Cecile ran away from them and moved to California.
One day their dad decides they need to meet the mother who left them many years before. The three girls travel to Oakland, California to stay with her for four weeks. When they finally get there, they all find out that there mother is really mean and nasty. She doesn't cook them meals or do their laundry, and doesn't take care of them. Every night Delphine takes her sisters with her to get Chinese food; they ate this every night for dinner for the first three weeks.
Cecile sends the sisters to a Black Panther summer camp, which was like nothing they ever knew before! They come to discover that their mother is somehow involved with the Black Panthers. The girls didn't like going to the camp, but after weeks of learning about "their rights" they started to like the idea of standing up for themselves. One of the funniest parts of the story was when the kids from the summer camp went around town trying to get the shop owners to put up fliers for the freedom fighter rally. Fern, the youngest sister when into the Chinese restaurant where they ate every night to ask the owner of Ming's if she would put one in her window. The woman walked up and Fern said, "Mean Lady Ming, would you please help us and put up our flier?" The girls had always called her Mean Lady Ming behind her back! They didn't really think she was mean anymore, but for some reason the name stuck.
I enjoyed this book because I could really imagine the story and all of scenes seem to be played out in my head like a movie. When y'all read the ending you will cry just like I did because it was such a happy moment. Everyone who would like to read this book needs to be ready for the surprises in it.
Parent: What a fantastic book! I read "One Crazy Summer" with both of my daughters and thoroughly enjoyed it as an adult. We are a homeschooling family and this story gave me so many opportunities to revisit the Civil Rights Movement with them. I loved the history lessons that were sprinkled throughout the chapters. What an eye-opener for my girls to read about a life with so much contrast from their own. A mother who doesn't cook or hug and kiss you good-night? We had so many discussions after each chapter. Honestly, I wanted to read the whole book on day one!
One Crazy Summer Feature
- ISBN13: 9780060760885
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Customer Reviews
An excellent book --- brave, bold, funny, sad and endlessly interesting - Kidsreads.com - New York, NY
Eleven-year-old Delphine and her two sisters, Vonetta and Fern, live with their father and Big Ma, their guiding light grandmother, in Brooklyn. Their birth mother, Cecile, is in Oakland, California, doing her own thing during the summer of 1968. However, against her wishes, Delphine must spend her summer vacation with Cecile. She hopes she can put together some of the mysteries of her childhood and her mother's life, but is not excited about leaving home and having to continue to take care of her younger sisters in a strange place.
Cecile is a revolutionary, and having kids isn't really her main focus. She isn't a completely absent mom, but neither is she a particularly curious or protective one. She works with the Black Panthers, the revolutionary black movement that fostered controversy throughout the late '60s and early '70s. Like their Greenwich Village equivalents, these activists saw their activities as upstanding and necessary as a response to the craziness of the world at the time. It's a fascinating period to set a coming-of-age story against, and Rita Williams-Garcia does it without making the story too dark or frightening.
ONE CRAZY SUMMER captures both the unpredictable energy of the time and sets Delphine and her sisters right down in the midst of the some of the most politically charged and psychedelic experiences that closed out a decade of extreme change in the United States. When Cecile ends up getting arrested, the girls, especially Delphine, learn a valuable lesson about political intent and the democratic system. Delphine is a thoughtful, sweet 11-year-old, so the author has the opportunity to see this remarkable cultural period through new but attentive eyes, which makes the book a genuine page turner as well.
Family is such an average topic for books written for this audience, but Williams-Garcia finds new and interesting ways to discover the ins and outs of "family" in various incarnations. The Panthers are a family, too, and Cecile finds them easier to deal with than the family she created biologically. But as time goes on, her maternal instincts start to make an appearance, and she and her girls find common and uncontroversial ground they can tread together towards a new future where their own family shares Cecile's favors with her political family.
ONE CRAZY SUMMER is an excellent book --- brave, bold, funny, sad and endlessly interesting --- and will start many worthwhile discussions with your favorite young reader.
One Crazy Summer - Genie E. Enders - Evergreen, CO
When eleven-year-old Dephine and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, are sent from their home in Brooklyn to spend the summer in Oakland, CA, with the mother that completely abandoned them years earlier, I was very skeptical about this vacation and fearful for the girls. And when I met their "mother", Cecile, my fears were realized in spades.Cecile was the coldest, most indifferent "mom" I have ever met, in fiction or otherwise. Why did their nurturing dad and grandma send these three innocents to a place that was hostile and downright dangerous?
They were made to fend (and pay!) for their own food, sent off (they had to find it themselves that first day!) to a Black Panther summer camp for kids every week day, so that Cecile, the poet, can "create". And, by the way, why does she refuse to call her youngest (the one she abandoned as an infant) by her name? Fern. It's always "Little Girl"?
Of the three sisters, Daphine, the oldest, considers herself the plain one. Nothing fancy. Maybe so. But she's the real "mother" in the story. Never mind that her sisters are showier and more dramatic. And she's the girl that the heartthrob of the Black Panther camp, eleven-year-old Hirohito (he's half Japanese, half black) falls for.
Is there a redemption story about Ceceile? A reason for her being the way she is? And why does (the last straw of hurtfulness) refuse to call her youngest by her name! And is she really a poet?
I found out the answers by reading this intriguing story. Now it's your turn.
GreenBeanTeenQueen Reviews-www.greenbeanteenqueen.com - GreenBeanTeenQueen - MO
I really fell hard for this book-I reviewed it for TeensReadToo.com and it recieve a Gold Star award from me-I loved it that much. It's hard to express how wonderful this book is and how much I adored it. I was pretty sure I would enjoy since I had been hearing a positive buzz around this book. But I was completely unexpected for how much this book would pull me in and not let go-I couldn't put it down.
This is a quiet book. It's not an action filled book, and there wasn't any suspense that made me keep turning pages. It was just the beautifully written story of three sisters discovering their mother and themselves. There was just something about it that really resonated with me as a reader and I had to keep reading this one-I couldn't stop.
The writing is superb-this is a middle grade novel, but the author never writes down to her audience and the characters are beautifully realistic and the dynamics between the sisters is spot-on. I loved Delphine-I think she's one of my new favorite characters in children's lit. In many ways she is wise beyond her years, being the oldest sister and having to care for her younger sisters and mediating their quarrels. But she's also a child herself and she lets herself finally be a child during this summer. The reader gets to know Delphine so much during the course of the book, that the reader ends up growing with her and Ms. Williams-Garcia pulls it off beautifully.
I think what I loved most, that even though this is a middle-grade tween book, there are so many layers that readers of all ages could read it get something different. I was honestly amazed at how much I fell into this book and how much I loved it.
One Crazy Summer has five starred reviews and I think it's extremely deserving. I really could keep gushing about this book, but instead you should get yourself a copy. This one is on my Newbery Award shortlist (along with The Night Fairy) Highly recommended for tweens and up.
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Jun 29, 2010 20:20:06
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