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November 3, 2015 by Betsy Bird

Review of the Day: Gone Crazy in Alabama by Rita Williams-Garcia

November 3, 2015 by Betsy Bird   9 comments

GoneCrazyGone Crazy in Alabama
By Rita Williams-Garcia
Amistad (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0062215871
Ages 9-12
On shelves now.

I’m a conceited enough children’s librarian that I like it when a book wins me over. I don’t want them to make it easy for me. When I sit down to read something I want to know that the author on the other side of the manuscript is scrabbling to get the reader’s attention. Granted that reader is supposed to be a 10-year-old kid and not a 37-year-old woman, but to a certain extent audience is audience. Now I’ll say right off the bat that under normal circumstances I don’t tend to read sequels and I CERTAINLY don’t review them. There are too many books published in a current year to keep circling back to the same authors over and over again. There are, however, always exceptions to the rule. And who amongst us can say that Rita Williams-Garcia is anything but exceptional? The Gaither Sisters chronicles (you could also call them the One Crazy Summer Books and I think you’d be in the clear) have fast become modern day literary classics for kids. Funny, painful, chock full of a veritable cornucopia of historical incidents, and best of all they stick in your brain like honey to biscuits. Read one of these books and you can recall them for years at a time. Now the bitter sweetness of “Gone Crazy in Alabama” gives us more of what we want (Vonetta! Uncle Darnell! Big Ma!) in a final, epic, bow.

Going to visit relatives can be a chore. Going to visit warring relatives? Now THAT is fun! Sisters Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern have been to Oakland and Brooklyn but now they’ve turned South to Alabama to visit their grandmother Big Ma, their great-grandmother Ma Charles, and Ma Charles’s half sister Miss Trotter. Delphine, as usual, places herself in charge of her younger, rebellious, sisters, not that they ever appreciate it. As she learns more about her family’s history (and the reason the two half sisters loathe one another) she ignores her own immediate family’s needs until the moment when it almost becomes too late.

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I’m an oldest sister. I have two younger siblings. Unlike Delphine I didn’t have the responsibility of watching over my siblings for any extended amount of time. As a result, I didn’t pay all that much attention to them growing up. But like Delphine, I would occasionally find myself trying, to my mind anyway, to keep them in line. Where Rita Williams-Garcia excels above all her peers, and I do mean all of them, is in the exchanges between these three girls. If I had an infinite revenue stream I would solicit someone to adapt their conversations into a very short play for kids to perform somewhere (actually, I’d just like to see ALL these books as plays for children, but that’s neither here nor there). The dialogue sucks you in and you find yourself getting emotionally involved. Because Delphine is our narrator you’re getting everything from her perspective and in this the author really makes you feel like she’s on the right side of every argument. It would be an excellent writing exercise to charge a class of sixth graders with the task of rewriting one of these sections from Vonetta or Fern’s point of view instead.

As I might have mentioned before, I wasn’t actually sold initially on this book. Truth be told, I liked the sequel to One Crazy Summer (called P.S. Be Eleven) but found the ending rushed and a tad unsatisfying. That’s just me, and my hopes with Gone Crazy were not initially helped by this book’s beginning. I liked the set-up of going South and all that, but once they arrived in Alabama I was almost immediately confused. We met Ma Charles and then very soon thereafter we met another woman very much like her who lived on the other side of a creek. No explanation was forthcoming about these two, save some cryptic descriptions of wedding photos, and I felt very much out to sea. My instinct is to say that a child reader would feel the same way, but kids have a way of taking confusing material at face value, so I suspect the confusion was of the adult variety more than anything else. Clearly Ms. Williams-Garcia was setting all this up for the big reveal of the half-sister’s relationship, and I appreciated that, but at the same time I thought it could have been introduced in a different way. Things were tepid for me for a while, but then the story really started picking up. By the time we got to the storm, I was sold.

And it was at this point in the book that I realized that I’d been coming at the book all wrong. Williams-Garcia was feeding me red herrings and I’m gulping them down like there’s no tomorrow. This book isn’t laser focusing its attention on great big epic themes of historical consequence. All this book is, all it ever has been, all the entire SERIES is about in its heart of hearts, is family. And that’s it. The central tension can be boiled down to something as simple and effective as whether or not Delphine and Vonetta can be friends. Folks are always talking about bullying and bully books. They tend to involve schoolmates, not siblings, but as Gone Crazy in Alabama shows, sometimes bullying is a lot closer to home than anyone (including the bully) is willing to acknowledge.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about needing more diverse books for kids, and it’s absolutely a valid concern. I have always been of the opinion, however, that we also need a lot more funny diverse books. When most reading lists’ sole hat tip to the African-American experience is Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (no offense to Mildred D. Taylor, but you see what I’m getting at here) while the white kids star in books like Harriet the Spy and Frindle, something’s gotta change. We Need Diverse Books? We Need FUNNY Diverse Books too. Something someone’s going to enjoy reading and want to pick up again. That’s why Christopher Paul Curtis has been such a genius the last few years (because, seriously, who else would explore the ramifications of vomiting on Frederick Douglass?) and why the name Rita Williams-Garcia will be remembered long after you and I are tasty toasty worm food. Because this book IS funny while also balancing out pain and hurt and hope.

An interviewer once asked Ms. Williams-Garcia if she ever had younger sisters like the ones in this book or if she’d ever spent a lot of time in rural Alabama, like they do here. She replied good-naturedly that nope. It reminded me of that story they tell about Dustin Hoffman playing Richard III. He put stones in his shoes to get the limp right. Laurence Olivier caught wind of this and his response was along the lines of, “My dear boy, why don’t you try acting?” That’s Ms. Williams-Garcia for you. She does honest-to-goodness writing. Writing that can conjure up estranged siblings and acts of nature. Writing that will make you laugh and think and think again after that. Beautifully done, every last page. A trilogy winds down on just the right note.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

  • The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
  • Jump Into the Sky by Shelley Pearsall
  • The Laura Line by Crystal Allen

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2015, Reviews, Reviews 2015

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2015 historical fiction2015 middle grade novels2015 reviewsBest Books of 2015historical fictionmiddle grade fictionmiddle grade historical fiction

About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

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About Betsy Bird

Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Colby says

    November 3, 2015 at 6:24 am

    I think this is the best book of 2015.

    • Elizabeth Bird says

      November 3, 2015 at 9:59 am

      It’s interesting. I think the reason it took me so long to get to reviewing it was that I had to talk to lots of people about it and process it myself. In the end, I really do think it has a Newbery chance. It wouldn’t be the first book in a series to win the Award where its predecessor did not (though One Crazy Summer tends to be my It Shoulda Won example time and time again). But I needed something like seven months to reach this conclusion.

      • Colby says

        November 3, 2015 at 1:05 pm

        I usually don’t read past the first book in a series. I just don’t have time with all the great books out there calling for my attention, but I find myself drawn to these characters.

  2. Judy says

    November 3, 2015 at 12:04 pm

    I appreciate the work and time you put into your blog each day. Reading your thoughts and comments help deepen my appreciation and understanding of each book you review. The interactions among Delphine, Vonetta, Fern, and all their relatives greatly interested and often amused me. These three books are favorites of mine. I look forward to visiting these three sisters again during rereads and also look forward to future work from Ms. Williams-Garcia.

    Thank you again, Betsy, for all you do.

  3. Monica Edinger says

    November 3, 2015 at 12:30 pm

    About family and, even moreso, about sisters. The character development of those three girls is simply brilliant. Through talk, through body language (I think of Fern’s punching down of her fists when upset), through circumstances (Fern and the chickens), the cool little things like Charlotte’s Web versus Things Fall Apart. I adore this book and am overdue writing my own blog post — which will be arguing for why it should be a serious Newbery contender, even as the final book in a series.

  4. Debbie Reese says

    November 7, 2015 at 4:51 pm

    No mention of Native content… it is there. I like the book very much. Did you notice the Native parts?

    • Elizabeth Bird says

      November 7, 2015 at 10:49 pm

      I did! It actually reminded me of this New York Times Magazine article I read years ago. I wish I could remember when I saw it. In the story it was about an African-American family where the eldest son was highly intelligent but they didn’t have the money to send him to college. Their last hope was a story circulated in the family that they had a Native ancestor, so they set out to find a family Bible that might prove it and possibly secure some kind of scholarship funding. Needless to say, they weren’t able to find out anything, but the article talked a bit about the history of African-Americans and their interactions with different Native tribes in different regions.

      I’m glad you liked it. I wondered what your take would be on the Native content.

  5. Kimbra Power says

    November 9, 2015 at 12:52 am

    Thanks Betsy, I’ve got this on my Mock Newbery 16 list TBR pile and now between you and Colby Sharp… well, it’s moved up in the list!

    Kinda crushing on those Gaither sisters…
    Loved the first two books in the series, now excited to read the third.
    Cheers

Trackbacks

  1. AASL 2015: Spirit and Surprises | School Library Journal says:
    November 11, 2015 at 2:04 pm

    […] was no dearth of authors in attendance at the conference. Rita Williams-Garcia, Sonia Manzano, and Matt de la Peña spoke at the Friday evening banquet on “Diverse Authors, […]

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