One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia

 Williams-Garcia, R. (2019). One crazy summer. Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company. 

One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia takes place in 1968. When three girls are sent to live with their mother for the summer, hoping to go to Disneyland and get to know the mother they barely know. Instead, they end up rebuffed by their mother and sent to a Black Panther  day camp, where they begin attending protests and learning about a movement for black liberation. Themes of One Crazy Summer include race, family bonds (especially those between sisters), and identity. In many ways, this novel is a bildungsroman, or coming of age novel for Delphine in particular, though all three of the girls go through major change throughout. The main occurrence in One Crazy Summer is the three sisters going to visit their mother, Cecile, who they knew only when they were quite young. Cecile abandoned Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern just days after Cecile’s birth, and while Delphine states that it was over the choice of name for Fern, Cecile indicates it’s much more complicated than that. However, her reasons are not explained beyond this. 

While the Black Panthers were a very real movement for Black Liberation, some kids are unlikely to be aware of them prior to reading this book. Little is done to explain who the Black Panthers are and what they do, though Delphine expresses a bit of disapproval at her mother’s involvement. Due to the lack of explanation of who the Black Panthers are, and what they do to fight for Black Liberation, children may be confused, though they may also use this confusion as an opportunity to ask their parents or do some research of their own.

Their mother is a poet who goes by the pen name Nzilla. This name is important, as all names, words, and senses of identity are throughout. There is a chapter devoted to Delphine’s fury at discovering that her name means Dolphin, though she previously believed that it was a unique name that came straight from Cecile’s mind. Another instance of name being important is that Cecile left their family over Fern’s name, and her refusal to call Fern anything other than “little girl”, much to Fern’s distress. There is also a paragraph where Delphine tells the reader all about the different versions of the term “mother” and what they mean, including, “ma”, “Mama”, “mom”, and so on. As Nzilla is a poet, this makes sense, and the book proves time and time again that words have power.