One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

In this Newbery Honor novel, New York Times bestselling author Rita Williams-Garcia tells the story of three sisters who travel to Oakland, California, in 1968 to meet the mother who abandoned them. A strong option for summer reading--take this book along on a family road trip or enjoy it at home.

This moving, funny novel won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and the Coretta Scott King Award and was a National Book Award Finalist. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern's story continues in P.S. Be Eleven and Gone Crazy in Alabama.

Readers who enjoy Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham and Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming will find much to love in One Crazy Summer. Rita Williams-Garcia's books about Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern can also be read alongside nonfiction explorations of American history such as Jason Reynolds's and Ibram X. Kendi's books.

In One Crazy Summer, eleven-year-old Delphine is like a mother to her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern. She's had to be, ever since their mother, Cecile, left them seven years ago for a radical new life in California. But when the sisters arrive from Brooklyn to spend the summer with their mother, Cecile is nothing like they imagined.

While the girls hope to go to Disneyland and meet Tinker Bell, their mother sends them to a day camp run by the Black Panthers. Unexpectedly, Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern learn much about their family, their country, and themselves during one truly crazy summer.

This novel was the first featured title for Marley D's Reading Party, launched after the success of #1000BlackGirlBooks. Maria Russo, in a New York Times list of "great kids' books with diverse characters," called it "witty and original."

"This vibrant and moving award-winning novel has heart to spare," commented Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich in her Brightly article "Knowing Our History to Build a Brighter Future: Books to Help Kids Understand the Fight for Racial Equality."

One Crazy Summer, a Newbery Honor Novel by Rita Williams-Garcia, was a Coretta Scott King Author Prize winner, a National Book Award finalist, a Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction winner, and a New York Times bestseller. P.S. I Love You and P.S. I Love You, are the two sequels to P.S Both Coretta Scott King Author Award winners and ALA Notable Children's Books, Be Eleven and Gone Mad in Alabama, Clayton Byrd Goes Underground, her novel, was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the NAACP Image Award for Youth/Teen Fiction. Rita is also the author of five additional notable young adult novels: Jumped, a National Book Award finalist; No Laughing Here, Every Time a Rainbow Dies (both ALA Best Books for Young Adults); and Blue Tights (all Publishers Weekly Best Children's Books).

Rita Williams-Garcia has two grown daughters and resides in Jamaica, New York, with her husband. You may find out more about her at www.ritawg.com.