BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSEleven-year-old Delphine Gaither has spent her whole life looking after her younger sisters Vonetta and Fern in Brooklyn, standing in for the mother who left when Fern was barely a newborn. In the summer of 1968, their father puts all three girls on a plane to Oakland, California, deciding it is finally time for them to meet Cecile Johnson, the woman who walked out on the family years ago. What the girls were dreaming of, surfboards and Disneyland and a mother who would hug them and cry over how much they had grown, runs straight into what they find: a tall, pencil-in-her-braids poet who didn't ask them to come, won't let them in her kitchen, and sends them down the street each morning to get breakfast from a Black Panther community center. Delphine, who has always been the responsible one, now has to figure out who her mother actually is, keep her sisters from falling apart, and survive twenty-eight days in a city that feels nothing like home.
Free Battle of the Books questions for One Crazy Summer
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about One Crazy Summer. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a girl press against her sister just to glimpse a famous bridge from a plane window?
✓ Answer
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
Stuck in the middle seat, Delphine leans over Vonetta to see the Golden Gate Bridge she had read about in class. A stewardess scolds her, but she still catches a glimpse of orange steel poking through the smog.
- First half
In what book do kids color protest posters reading "Free Huey" and "Remember Li'l Bobby"?
✓ Answer
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
At the Center the kids color in big posters with slogans like Free Huey, Justice for All, and Remember Li'l Bobby. Delphine picks the Free Huey sign because she does not yet know who Li'l Bobby was.
- First half
In what book does a girl scrub a marked-up doll with Ajax and Pine-Sol but cannot get it clean?
✓ Answer
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
Delphine scrubs Miss Patty Cake with soap and then stronger cleaners, but the ink soaks into the soft plastic and leaves the doll gray and scratched. She hides the ruined doll in her suitcase to spare Fern from seeing it.
- Second half
In what book does a boy insist that his wheeled board is a go-kart, not a skateboard?
✓ Answer
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
Hirohito takes boy pride in correcting Delphine when she calls his homemade ride a skateboard. The go-kart, built by his father, becomes a big part of their friendship later in the story.
- Second half
In what book does a poet mother say she could have written a famous poem in her sleep?
✓ Answer
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
Cecile stomps in and tells Vonetta to cut it out, dismissing We Real Cool by saying she could have knocked that out in her sleep. She is unimpressed that people treat Gwen Brooks like a genius.
- Near the end
In what book does a handcuffed woman tell police, "Kids? I don't have no kids" about her own daughters?
✓ Answer
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
To keep the girls out of juvenile hall, Cecile denies they are hers as she is arrested, saying they belong to the Clarks down the street. The girls quickly play along and claim a different last name.
