One Crazy Summer

One Crazy Summer

• Genre: Fiction; middle-grade historical
• Originally Published: 2009
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 750L; grades 4-7
• Structure/Length: 33 chapters; approx. 240 pages; approx. 5 hours on audio
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters travel from Brooklyn, New York to Oakland, California in 1968 to meet the mother who abandoned them years ago. While there, their mother sends them to a community center run by the Black Panthers, and their experience results in one truly crazy summer.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Mild language; smoking

Rita Williams-Garcia, Author

• Bio: Lives in Queens, NY; graduated from Hofstra University; taught in the Writing for Children MFA Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts
• Other Works: P.S. Be Eleven (2013); Bottle Cap Boys (2015); Gone Crazy in Alabama (2015); Clayton Byrd Goes Underground (2017)
• Awards: National Book Award Finalist; ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults; Newbery Honor Book; Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction; Coretta Scott King Award

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• 1968
• Children and the Black Liberation Movement
• Mothers and Daughters
• The Importance of Naming

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:

• Develop an understanding of the historical, political, and social significance of the year 1968 and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense as significant drivers of the plot and setting in One Crazy Summer. 
• Analyze short paired texts and other resources to make connections via the novel's themes of The Importance of Naming and Children and the Black Liberation Movement. 
• Create an original work of poetry that engages with one of the novel’s four themes.