One Crazy Summer

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Chapters 1-4

Reading Check

1. Where are the Gaither sisters headed during the novel’s opening?

2. Why is Delphine surprised that Cecile lives in a house?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why are Delphine and her sisters apprehensive about living with Cecile for a month?

2. How does Delphine remember Cecile?

3. How does Delphine characterize Cecile after they meet at the airport?

Chapters 5-11

Reading Check

1. What do the girls eat for dinner on their first night in Oakland?

2. Who visits Cecile’s home after the girls eat dinner? What do they want from her?

3. Why do the other children tease Fern at the community center?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What are some things Cecile does that make Delphine decide that Cecile is a bad mother?

2. What about Cecile and the other adults the girls encounter makes Delphine think her mother is a “secret agent” or a “fugitive” from the law?

3. Why does Cecile send her daughters to the Black Panther Party Community Center?

Paired Resources

“How the Black Panthers’ Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government"

• This History.com article explains the origins and nature of the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast Program and explains how it inspired a federal free breakfast program.
• Will help answer student questions about the political climate of 1968
• Speculate on why Williams-Garcia thought it was important to depict the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program in this novel.

Chapters 12-16

Reading Check

1. What does Cecile’s other name, Nzila, mean?

2. Why do the boys at school sing the Flipper song at Delphine?

3. What happens to Fern’s doll, Miss Patty Cake?

4. Why does Delphine feel guilty about reading the newspapers while stacking and counting them?

5. What does Delphine make for dinner when Cecile lets her use the kitchen?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why are Delphine and her sisters confused about Cecile changing her name to Nzila?

2. Why does Delphine feel so responsible for her sisters?

Paired Resources

“Our Evolving Black American Naming Traditions”

• This Psychology Today article provides a comprehensive and in-depth history of African American naming traditions. (Potential sensitivity issue: references to enslaved people as simply “slaves”)
• Will help answer student questions about The Importance of Naming
• Why do Cecile and Delphine both find naming so important? Do they agree about the importance of naming? Why or why not?
• Based on this article, why might Cecile have felt it was of the utmost importance to change her name to Nzila? 
• How do the stories of Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern’s name align with the history explained in this article?

Flipper Theme Song

• For students and teachers who might be curious about the Flipper theme song
• What does Delphine’s annoyance with other students singing this song at her imply about her character?

"‘Discredit, Disrupt, and Destroy’: FBI Records Acquired by the Library Reveal Violent Surveillance of Black Leaders, Civil Rights Organizations"

• A short UC Berkeley Library blog post on the history, intention, and impacts of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, which Cecile references in Chapter 12
• In the novel, Cecile describes how the government might interrogate children in order to convict their parents of crimes. Delphine and her sisters’ incredulity was and still is a common response to such a line of thinking. How does the growing body of evidence about the actions and intentions of the FBI during the 1960s and 1970s force a reconsideration of such doubts?

Chapters 17-21

Reading Check

1. What does Delphine learn about Hirohito’s ethnicity?

2. What do the girls get instead of a TV?

3. Learning about Hirohito’s father reminds Delphine of what event from her own life?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why does Delphine declare that she and her sisters won’t attend the rally and won’t return to the center?

2. How are the lessons Delphine and her sisters learn about citizenship different from the ones they’ve learned in the past?

3. How do the girls practice what they learn at the center with their mother Cecile/Nzila?

4. Why does Bobby Hutton’s story rattle Delphine so much?

Paired Resource

"Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver Press Conference on Murder of Bobby Hutton (1968)"

• This two-minute video is footage from the press conference Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver held in response to Bobby Hutton’s murder.
• How are the racial and political tensions particular to 1968 reflected in both Seale’s and Cleaver’s cadence and word choices during the press conference? How does this relate to the Party’s Ten-Point plan?

"Bobby Hutton"

• From the companion site for PBS’s A Huey P. Newton Story, a short multimedia encyclopedia entry on Bobby Hutton
• How does this information about Hutton’s life emphasize Delphine’s empathy and fear about the role of Children in Black Liberation Movements?

Chapters 22-25

Reading Check

1. What analysis/reason does the girl’s grandmother (Big Ma) give for Vonetta’s attention-seeking behavior?

2. What does Delphine find waiting for her in Cecile’s kitchen when she goes to cook dinner?

3. How do the girls travel to San Francisco?

4. Why do the girls choose to buy their souvenirs at another shop?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does Delphine interpret her mother’s gift in the kitchen?

2. Which moments in this section show Delphine allowing herself to behave as a carefree child?

Chapters 26-33

Reading Check

1. What do the Gaither girls find when they return home from San Francisco?

2. Who comes to help the girls out when they find themselves in need?

3. What does Fern’s poem reveal to the attendees at the rally?

4. What name did Cecile want to give Fern when she was born?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why did Cecile abandon her daughters?

2. How does the final chapter reveal that things have changed between Cecile and the girls?

Recommended Next Reads

P.S. Be Eleven by Rita Williams-Garcia

• In this follow-up to One Crazy Summer, the Gaither sisters are home in Brooklyn when their uncle Darnell comes home from the Vietnam War.
• Like the earlier novel, the girls face challenges that force them to adjust to the changing world around them, in ways both political and personal.

Some Places More Than Others by Renee Watson

• This novel follows 11-year-old Amara from her privileged existence in Beaverton, Oregon to Harlem, New York to delve into her family history and cultural roots.
• Along the way, Amara helps reunite her family and learns about the people who helped her family get to where they are.