One Crazy Summer
by Rita Williams-Garcia

    ONE CRAZY SUMMER by Rita Williams-Garcia
    Category:  Contemporary
    Age Recommendation:  Grades 6+
    Release Date:  1/26/10
    Publisher:  Amistad
    Reviewed by:  Sarah Bean the Green Bean Teen Queen
    Rating:  5 Stars


    It’s 1968 and Delphine and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, are being sent to California to visit the
    mother that abandoned them soon after Fern was born.  The girls have grand ideas about a mother who will hug
    them and take them to Disneyland.  

    Instead, their mother, Cecile, doesn’t want anything to do with them, cares more about her poetry, and sends
    them for Chinese take-out every night.  She’s more concerned about her work and sends the girls to a Blank
    Panther-run summer camp during the day.  The girls learn about revolution and family in a summer they will
    never forget.  
    It’s hard to express how wonderful this book is and how much I adored it.  I was pretty sure I would enjoy it,
    since I had been hearing a positive buzz.  But I was completely unprepared 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 story that the reader ends up growing with her - and Ms. Williams-Garcia pulls it off
    beautifully.  
    I really could keep gushing about this book, but instead you should get yourself a copy. Highly recommended
    for tweens and up.