One Crazy Summer (15 page)

Authors: Rita Williams-Garcia

Tags: #Ages 9 and up, #Newbery Honor

BOOK: One Crazy Summer

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Acknowledgments

There are so many women and girls in this story. Women I’ve known. Poets I grew up reading. Girlhood friends. Through the writing, the people who kept me inspired were my hurricane of a mother, Miss Essie Mae Coston Williams, my own “Delphine”—Rosalind Williams Rogers, Rashamella Cumbo, Debra Bonner, Ruby Whitaker, and so many more. Among the poets I thought of during the writing were Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Kattie Miles Cumbo. And where would this work be without my sister, champion, and editor: Rosemary Brosnan?

I could not have written this work of fiction without having read books, articles, and interviews that cover this
period. I specifically could not have felt the climate of the times from Black Panther accounts and perspectives without David Hilliard’s
The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service
.

I wanted to write this story for those children who witnessed and were part of necessary change. Yes. There were children.

About the Author

W
inner of the PEN/Norma Klein Award,
Rita Williams-Garcia
is the author of six distinguished novels for young adults: most recently,
JUMPED
; as well as
NO LAUGHTER HERE, EVERY TIME A RAINBOW DIES
(a
Publishers Weekly
Best Children’s Book), and
FAST TALK ON A SLOW TRACK
(all ALA Best Books for Young Adults);
BLUE TIGHTS
; and
LIKE SISTERS ON THE HOMEFRONT
. The latter was named a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and was chosen as an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a best book of the year by ALA
Booklist, School Library Journal, The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, The Horn Book
, and
Publishers Weekly
. Rita Williams-Garcia lives in Jamaica, New York, is on the faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in the Writing for Children & Young Adults Program, and has two adult daughters, Michelle and Stephanie. You can visit her online at www.ritawg.com.

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Also by Rita Williams-Garcia

Blue Tights

Every Time a Rainbow Dies

Fast Talk on a Slow Track

Jumped

Like Sisters on the Homefront

No Laughter Here

Credits

Jacket design by Joel Tippie

Copyright

ONE CRAZY SUMMER
. Copyright © 2010 by Rita Williams-Garcia. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Williams-Garcia, Rita.

One crazy summer/Rita Williams-Garcia.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: In the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

ISBN 978-0-06-076088-5 (trade bdg.)—ISBN 978-0-06-076089-2 (lib. bdg.)

[1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Mothers—Fiction. 3. Poets—Fiction. 4. African Americans—Fiction. 5. Black Panther Party—Fiction. 6. Civil rights movements—Fiction. 7. Oakland (Calif.)—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.W6713On 2010 2009009293

[Fic]—dc22 CIP

EPub Edition © December 2009 ISBN: 978-0-06-196667-5

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