One Crazy Summer

Written by: Rita Williams-Garcia

First line: Good thing the plane had seat belts and we'd been strapped in tight before takeoff.

Why you should read this book: It deserves all the awards and accolades that have been heaped upon it.  It's 1968 and eleven-year-old narrator, Delphine, along with her sisters, nine-year-old Vonetta and seven-year-old Fern, are being shipped from the protective arms of their father and grandmother in New York, to meet their crazy mother, Cecile who abandoned them to be a poet in Oakland, California. Cecile is far from their ideal of motherly love, and packs them off to a free day camp run by the Black Panthers, where they are about to learn all manner of things they never expected, and teach those around them a thing or two in the process.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Not a fan of intelligent, thought-provoking prose.