One Crazy Summer

6/15/2020

Ten awards & honors, as well as named Best Book of the Year by seven literary organizations & newspapers

Rita Williams-Garcia

Williams-Garcia sold her first short story at the age of 14 to Highlights. She's published 9 novels for young teens and young adults; One Crazy Summer is the first in a trilogy about the Gaither sisters. Williams-Garcia taught in the Writing for Children's MFA Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has received numerous awards including the Coretta Scott King Award, a National Book Award Finalist, a Newbery Honor Book, Junior Library Guild, and the Scott O’Dell Prize for Historical Fiction.

World Context

Today's most challenging social and economic problems are a result of our nation's legislated, systemic racism.

We the people of the United States are failing to "form a more perfection union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessing of liberty" for all of our people.

Sister Mukumbu said, "Yesterday we learned revolution means 'change' and that we can all be revolutionaries." As she spoke, we stepped carefully between the posters, choosing one and then plopping down next to it. Sister Pat passed around a bucket of Magic Markers and crayons.

Part of me felt like repeating Vonetta's words: "We didn't come for the revolution. We came for breakfast."

But part of me wanted to see what it was all about.

Synopsis

Delphine and her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, travel from Brooklyn to Oakland to visit their mother, Cecile, who left them seven years earlier -- just after Fern was born. The girls' dream of visiting Disneyland to meet Tinker Bell are dashed when Cecile wants them out of the house everyday -- all day -- and sends them off to the local day camp run by the Black Panthers. Cecile may not be the mother they'd hoped to meet, but they experience so much in a few short weeks during the summer of 1968.

Learning Connections

African American History
Civil Rights Movement
Black Panther Party
Summer of 1968, 20th Century American History
Poetry
Protest Movements

Unit Plan for 5th Grade, Teach Like A Champion, CCSS aligned curriculum guide
Reading is Fundamental, stand alone activities
Teaching guide by Amistad, Harper-Collins Publisher

Ages: 9-15; middle and young teen readers; 218 pages. Three sisters meet their mother and attend a day-camp run by the Black Panthers in the summer of 1968.