Award-scooping children’s author Rita Williams-Garcia, known for her realistic portrayal of teens of color, is busy writing new chapters in her trail-blazing literary career.
First, the Queens ex-pat won the PEN/Norma Klein Award, an accomplishment she topped last November by receiving the Scott O’Dell Award for historical young adult fiction, and being named a National Book Award finalist for her 2010 middle grade novel, “One Crazy Summer.”
Cited as a Best Book by the Boston Globe, the Horn Book, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal, “One Crazy Summer” follows three sisters from Brooklyn who are sent off to live with their estranged mother in Oakland, Calif. during the tumultuous summer of 1968.
Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern learn about their mom, Cecile, make new friends, and experience firsthand the electricity of the Black Power movement under the guidance and care of a day camp run by the Black Panthers.
“Why not see this movement through a child’s eyes? We never connect children with the Black Panther Movement, but they were there, either participating or being served,” said Williams-Garcia, who has sat on the National Book Award Committee for Young People’s Literature.
The author, who currently resides in Jamaica, credits her scribe’s curiosity with growing up in the politically-charged 1960s, and developing a love of reading and writing at an early age.
“In the midst of real events, I daydreamed and wrote stories.”
Contrary to popular belief, teenagers will pore over a good book — if the material is right, said Williams-Garcia, whose hunch has proved wildly successful with her target audience.
“They hunger for stories that engage them and reflect their images and experiences.”
“One Crazy Summer” has garnered the novelist glowing reviews from the New York Times, which claims, “[Williams-Garcia] skillfully slips in wry period touches like Delphine’s beloved Timex watch, ‘The Mike Douglas Show’ on television and the picture — on the classroom wall at the People’s Center — of Huey Newton ‘sitting in a big wicker chair with a rifle at his side.’”
The Washington Post glows, “With authenticity and humor, she portrays the ever-shifting dynamics among ultra-responsible Delphine, show-off Vonetta and stubborn Fern.”
“One Crazy Summer” also clinched Williams-Garcia the Coretta Scott King Award, an honor the creative writing graduate of Queens College (’97) — and author of seven other young adult novels, a picture book and several essays and short stories — will accept in June at the American Library Association’s annual conference in New Orleans, La. When Williams-Garcia accepts that award, she will join the illustrious ranks of James Haskins (“The Story of Stevie Wonder”) and Pearl Bailey (“Duey’s Tale”).
The Coretta Scott King Award was created in 1970 by the wife of legendary civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Its first recipient was Lillie Patterson, biographer of “Martin Luther King, Jr. Man of Peace,” who was honored at that year’s dinner gala of the New Jersey Library Association.
