One Crazy Summer - review

It's maternity leave - day 6.  The morning started where even standing felt like too much pressure on my pelvic bone, but the day changes, and it ended with me making cookies and lasagna.

I also finished a book.  I am borrowing from my county library back in Minnesota where my membership allows me to "check out" and read e-books.

My favorite genre is adolescent literature.  It fits that I became a middle school teacher as well - but I love the perspective (and the skill of a writer to give this sometimes limited and sometimes insightful perspective).  I have a list of favorites that I may list another time, but then again - I would want to read them again to tell why I loved them so much, and especially how they moved me so.

I tend to stick to award winning books, or, when I find an author of an award winning book I like - I go from there.  The habit started when I was teaching in New York.  Our classroom libraries were supplied with only award winning books in order to insure quality reading material - and so I too was exposed to a lot of great books: Maniac Magee, Bud not Buddy, Out of the Dust, The Giver (and its companion books - cried my eyes out on the third one).  They are great stories that also deal with serious and often heartbreaking issues.

One Crazy Summer was written by Rita Williams- Garcia and was a National Book Award Finalist.  It's main character is an eleven-year-old girl named Delphine.  She lives in Brooklyn with her father, grandmother ("Big Ma") and two younger sisters whom she takes much responsibility for.  Their mother left the family when Delphine was young, and the story is about the summer they go to visit and get-to-know their mother.  Their mother was not a likable character - not even a mother, but a seemingly selfish being with a tortured artist's personality - a point made sadder by the fact that the eleven-year-old sees this and naturally assumes the role of caretaker for her family.

I liked the historical setting and contrasts in the the book.  They started in Brooklyn and flew to Oakland to see their mom.  It must have been in the 60s and the girls end up going to a summer camp run by the Black Panthers.  I really liked how the different issues of race were lightly touched upon: Big Ma admonishing the kids not to make a "colored spectacle of themselves" - trying to teach the children pride in self while negotiating the images they gave and were pressed upon them in the times.  In Oakland, the girls were learning Black Pride and joining rallies, all to the backdrop of the girls trying to get to know this mother who never seemed to want them around.  And it was strange to even read about Delphine's prejudices learned from television and news about the Black Panthers, where some things were true, some things were worse, but most things: the everyday support of the community could only have been learned from experience.

I would recommend the book because it was different - I mean, what children's book has ever touched upon the topic of the Black Panthers?