With summer coming we all are starting to make plans for how we will spend our time. In the summer of 1968 Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern travel from Brooklyn to Oakland, CA to spend time with the mother that abandoned them and their father 7 years earlier. This book vividly portrays the racial tension that was rampant in the county during the 1960's. The language used it true to the time, and the girls distress over not really knowing their mother is palpable. This is book is so well written and, even though it is set in the 60's, the over arching themes are still relevant today. Come check out this great book!
From School Library Journal:
It is 1968, and three black sisters from Brooklyn have been put on a California-bound plane by their father to spend a month with their mother, a poet who ran off years before and is living in Oakland. It's the summer after Black Panther founder Huey Newton was jailed and member Bobby Hutton was gunned down trying to surrender to the Oakland police, and there are men in berets shouting "Black Power" on the news. Delphine, 11, remembers her mother, but after years of separation she's more apt to believe what her grandmother has said about her, that Cecile is a selfish, crazy woman who sleeps on the street. At least Cecile lives in a real house, but she reacts to her daughters' arrival without warmth or even curiosity. Instead, she sends the girls to eat breakfast at a center run by the Black Panther Party and tells them to stay out as long as they can so that she can work on her poetry. Over the course of the next four weeks, Delphine and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, spend a lot of time learning about revolution and staying out of their mother's way. Emotionally challenging and beautifully written, this book immerses readers in a time and place and raises difficult questions of cultural and ethnic identity and personal responsibility. With memorable characters (all three girls have engaging, strong voices) and a powerful story, this is a book well worth reading and rereading.
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