Once Crazy Summer
Trade paperback edition in good condition. Fine reading copy. Ages 9-11. Gaither Sisters #1.
“A name is important. It isn’t something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. You name is how people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it’s a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can’t be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you’re known even when you do something great or something dumb.”
Eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. Even though her mother, Cecile, abondoned her and her younger sisters, Vonette and Fern, seven years ago. Even though her father and Big Ma will send them from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to stay with Cecile for the summer. And even though Delphine will have to take care of her sisters, as usual, and learn the truth about the missing pieces of the past.
When the girls arrive in Oakland in the summer of 1968, Cecile wants nothing to do with them. She makes them eat Chinese takeout dinners, forbids them to enter her kitchen, and never explains the strange visitors with Afros and black berets who knock on her door. Rather than spend time with them, Cecile sends Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern to a summer camp sponsored by a revolutionary group, the Black Panthers, where the girls get a radical new education.
Set during one of the most tumultuous years in modern American history, One Crazy Summer is the heartbreaking, funny tale of three girls in search of the mother who abandoned them.
Trade paperback edition in good condition. Fine reading copy. Ages 9-11. Gaither Sisters #1.
“A name is important. It isn’t something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. You name is how people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it’s a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can’t be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you’re known even when you do something great or something dumb.”
Eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. Even though her mother, Cecile, abondoned her and her younger sisters, Vonette and Fern, seven years ago. Even though her father and Big Ma will send them from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to stay with Cecile for the summer. And even though Delphine will have to take care of her sisters, as usual, and learn the truth about the missing pieces of the past.
When the girls arrive in Oakland in the summer of 1968, Cecile wants nothing to do with them. She makes them eat Chinese takeout dinners, forbids them to enter her kitchen, and never explains the strange visitors with Afros and black berets who knock on her door. Rather than spend time with them, Cecile sends Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern to a summer camp sponsored by a revolutionary group, the Black Panthers, where the girls get a radical new education.
Set during one of the most tumultuous years in modern American history, One Crazy Summer is the heartbreaking, funny tale of three girls in search of the mother who abandoned them.
Trade paperback edition in good condition. Fine reading copy. Ages 9-11. Gaither Sisters #1.
“A name is important. It isn’t something you drop in the litter basket or on the ground. You name is how people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it’s a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can’t be knocked down. Your name is who you are and how you’re known even when you do something great or something dumb.”
Eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. Even though her mother, Cecile, abondoned her and her younger sisters, Vonette and Fern, seven years ago. Even though her father and Big Ma will send them from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to stay with Cecile for the summer. And even though Delphine will have to take care of her sisters, as usual, and learn the truth about the missing pieces of the past.
When the girls arrive in Oakland in the summer of 1968, Cecile wants nothing to do with them. She makes them eat Chinese takeout dinners, forbids them to enter her kitchen, and never explains the strange visitors with Afros and black berets who knock on her door. Rather than spend time with them, Cecile sends Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern to a summer camp sponsored by a revolutionary group, the Black Panthers, where the girls get a radical new education.
Set during one of the most tumultuous years in modern American history, One Crazy Summer is the heartbreaking, funny tale of three girls in search of the mother who abandoned them.
ISBN 978-0-06-076090-8
Rita Williams-Garcia
2010
Corretta Scott King Award Winner