Rita Williams-Garcia, The Great!

Literature is my love, and being a teacher forever at heart, I have a passion for middle grade and young adult fiction. Though I love a great adult novel, as well as nonfiction, I appreciate YA and MG books because they can explore subjects that adult authors don't while also teaching the reader great themes.

I'm also very proud to have been chosen to walk this earth as a black woman. I was born in 1980, so I didn't grow up with access to book characters that looked like me. When I learned of One Crazy Summer, Rita Williams-Garcia's MG book I was excited to buy and read!

One Crazy Summer is a historical fiction novel about three sisters, Delphine and her younger sisters Vonetta and Fern, live with their father and grandmother in New York. They don't know much about their mother, who lives in Oakland, so when their father sends them to spend the summer with her, they're not too thrilled. Their mom doesn't make the visit easy either. She's very secretive and seems uninterested in spending time with them, choosing to send them to the neighborhood rec center run by a group that her mother is affiliated with, The Black Panthers. They experience a cultural awakening and begin figuring out the puzzle that is their family.

I wasn't even halfway finished with the book when I was so invested in the lives of these three girls that I ordered the sequels so that I wouldn't have any wait time between continuing my journey with the Gaither sisters.

Book 2 in the series is P.S. Be Eleven, and it picks up right where book 1 leaves off. When the Gaither girls return home to New York, they are more keenly aware of their surroundings, including the strange behavior of their uncle who's home from Vietnam. Delphine's new teacher also piques her cultural interests by introducing her to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Delphine also corresponds with her mother in an attempt to build a relationship. Her mother, sensing Delphine's tendency to take on more than she has to, ends each letter with "P.S. - Be eleven" as a reminder that there will be a time for adult responsibilities so enjoy childhood while you can. That is the perfect advice I would give my eleven year-old self.

Book 3, the last in the series, finds the girls visiting family in Alabama. Like many families in the south, theirs has secrets. And rivalries. And unresolved trauma. The girls find themselves in the middle of a family feud and a racially tense community. Ultimately, they learn what's most important in life and so does the adults in their lives.

Most times, while enjoying a book for a younger audience, my brain is thinking of ways to use the novel as a mentor text, so indulge me. You could use this series for a wide variety of lessons such as the following:

• Character Development
• Multiple themes in a work of literature
• The importance of setting on theme
• Impact of point of view on a story
• Cultural and historical significance in literature.

If you're interested in learning how to develop this series into a curriculum unit, contact me! Click here!