Publishing: Amistad, Reprint Edition. December 27th, 2011.
Synopsis: The story of One Crazy Summer begins when one summer, three sisters from New York travel to Oakland, California to live with their mother who abandoned them as babies. Delphine is the oldest sister who acts as the mother to her younger sisters Vonetta and Fern. They arrive in California only to realize their mother is nothing like they could have ever imagined. Instead of doing fun mother daughter activities all summer their mother sends them to a day camp run by a radical group called the Black Panthers. The girls learn from a woman names Sister Mukumbu about all of the positive things that The Black Panthers do for the community such as feeding hungry children. After one of The Black Panther members gets shot by the police, the girls are told that they will be participating in a rally to get the founder Huey Newton out of prison. After returning from a day trip to San Francisco, the girls come home to find their mother being arrested. Cecile says she has no daughters to the police officer so the girls pretend to be neighbors. The time comes for the rally and the sisters read one of their mothers poems that they found in the kitchen. The sisters see their mother has been released from jail at the rally and they go home with her. Their mother reveals to them that she lost her mother at age 11 and that she has had a rough life ever since, trying to explain why she left them as babies. The next day the girls return home to New York after finally getting a hug from their mother.
The author Rita Williams-Garcia writes in a way that is clear, concise and direct in a way that is easy to follow. The author also has a way of writing that is subtle yet impactful and therefore sets her apart from other authors from whose works I have read.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book because I love any sort of story about discovery. Over the course of this One Crazy Summer, the girls learn so much not only about who their mom is, but also about whats going on in the world as well as who they are as people. I find books like this to be extremely interesting because I love to watch the transformation from the characters in the beginning to the characters at the end of the book.
While reading this book, I thought a lot about using this story to introduce a lesson on African American's fight for civil rights during the 1960s. I would definitely use this book to start a conversation and then a lesson on this topic and what was going on during this time. I would then have my students work in groups to present on different popular names that played a major role during this time period, such as The Black Panthers or Rosa Parks. I would then have them create a power point presentation to share with the class. Another activity to go along with this story that I thought of was using poetry like Cecile did in the book to share knowledge gained on the African American Civil Rights movement. I would then have my students create a "poetry café" in which each student would present their poem and the class would snap their approval afterwards.
No comments:
Post a Comment