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Gone Crazy in Alabama
Gone Crazy in Alabama
Gone Crazy in Alabama
Audiobook6 hours

Gone Crazy in Alabama

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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About this audiobook

The Coretta Scott King Award–winning Gone Crazy in Alabama by Newbery Honor and New York Times bestselling author Rita Williams-Garcia tells the story of the Gaither sisters as they travel from the streets of Brooklyn to the rural South for the summer of a lifetime.

Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are off to Alabama to visit their grandmother Big Ma and her mother, Ma Charles. Across the way lives Ma Charles’s half sister, Miss Trotter. The two half sisters haven’t spoken in years. As Delphine hears about her family history, she uncovers the surprising truth that’s been keeping the sisters apart. But when tragedy strikes, Delphine discovers that the bonds of family run deeper than she ever knew possible.

Powerful and humorous, this companion to the award-winning One Crazy Summer and P.S. Be Eleven will be enjoyed by fans of the first two books, as well as by readers meeting these memorable sisters for the first time.

Readers who enjoy Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham and Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming will find much to love in this book. Rita Williams-Garcia's books about Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern can also be read alongside nonfiction explorations of American history such as Jason Reynolds's and Ibram X. Kendi's books.

Each humorous, unforgettable story in this trilogy follows the sisters as they grow up during one of the most tumultuous eras in recent American history, the 1960s. Read the adventures of eleven-year-old Delphine and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, as they visit their kin all over the rapidly changing nation—and as they discover that the bonds of family, and their own strength, run deeper than they ever knew possible.

“The Gaither sisters are an irresistible trio. Williams-Garcia excels at conveying defining moments of American society from their point of view.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Coretta Scott King Award winner * ALA Notable Book * School Library Journal Best Book of the Year * Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year * ALA Booklist Editors’ Choice * Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year * Washington Post Best Books of the Year * The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Book * Three starred reviews * CCBC Choice * New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing * Amazon Best Book of the Year

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 21, 2015
ISBN9780062365842
Gone Crazy in Alabama
Author

Rita Williams-Garcia

Rita Williams-Garcia's Newbery Honor Book, One Crazy Summer, was a winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, a National Book Award finalist, the recipient of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and a New York Times bestseller. The two sequels, P.S. Be Eleven and Gone Crazy in Alabama, were both Coretta Scott King Author Award winners and ALA Notable Children’s Books. Her novel Clayton Byrd Goes Underground was a National Book Award finalist and winner of the NAACP Image Award for Youth/Teen Literature. Rita is also the author of five other distinguished novels for young adults: Jumped, a National Book Award finalist; No Laughter Here, Every Time a Rainbow Dies (a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book), Fast Talk on a Slow Track (all ALA Best Books for Young Adults); and Blue Tights. Rita Williams-Garcia lives in Jamaica, New York, with her husband and has two adult daughters. You can visit her online at ritawg.com.

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Reviews for Gone Crazy in Alabama

Rating: 4.341836857142858 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was absolutely phenomenal. It was especially fear-mongering at times.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Just perfect! This whole series of three books is so good, but this one may rate in my mind as the best. Full of real life including sadness, heartbreak, disaster and humor. A great and truly wonderful story for anyone from about age 10 all the way through the upper 90’s and above. It surely is!! ?

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Cute story. Kept me entertained on my walks. Thank you!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I SUGGEST ALL THREE OF THESE BOOKS ? THERE GREAT
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The third book in the trilogy makes me sad that I will no longer be able to share the experiences of the Gaither sisters. If you have not read any of them I would recommend that you start with the first, One Crazy Summer where the girls spend the summer with their Black Panther mother in Oakland. Understanding relationships is important in this series. In the final book the girls are sent to live with their Grandma and Great Grandma in rural Alabama quite a change from their home in Brooklyn. It’s challenging for these young girls to accept the racism found in the south. Their white cousin is the sheriff and a KKK member. But what comes out strongest in the telling is the history of the girls’ family and the strength and love of family.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Glad to hear the continuing story of the Gaither sisters. In parts of the story I kept thinking, why do they have to be so horrible to each other? And then I remember being a kid with a sibling, and how we fought and couldn't get along and always the most hurtful things come from family and I came back to yeah, she's nailed it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a wonderful conclusion of the "One Crazy Summer" series. Each of the three books tells a very different story, but all tales of the three Gaither girls, Delphine (our narrator), Vonetta and little Fern. All three books deal with complex family issues and with racism, but in different settings. "One Crazy Summer" takes place in Oakland, Calif.; "P.S. Be Eleven" is set in Brooklyn; and obviously, this one is set in Alabama.The first half of the story grew a little tedious to me, as Vonetta went back and forth telling her great-grandmother and her great-aunt (sisters and neighbors who had been feuding with each other for decades) stories that one told about the other. But when the tornado comes through, the story became much more intense, and much more interesting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Aw man...this series can't be over! What a sweet, sweet trilogy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Gone Crazy in Alabama by Rita William- Garcia is the last novel in the series about sisters Delphine, Vonetta and Fern. In this installment, the sisters are staying in Alabama with their grandmother for the summer and learned a lot about their family dynamics and history. Delphine, Vonetta and Fern learns forgive their drug addicted uncle after not speaking to him for a year. The girls learn the truth about their grandmother and her estranged half sister, who she did not talk to in years. They learn that their mother really love them and care about them by showing up when Vonetta goes missing. This novel offers a lot of closure and answers to Delphine, Vonetta and Fern story. The theme of this novel is the importance of family and family history.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Such authentic characters, and voices! This is the final of three books following the sisters, and though I have read them out of order, this third chapter arguably stands on its own.

    The family dynamics and rich southern setting are easy to get lost in and the straightforward interactions are entertaining. Family dynamics are well-explored, capturing the mysteries of the past and complex natures of how generations relate to one another. This is a fun weekend/beach read for grades 5-8 and grown-up fans alike. I hope they keep coming!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sisters Delphine, Vonetta and Fern continue their journey through African-American experiences of the 1960s in Gone Crazy in Alabama, in a satisfying and entertaining novel that continues their individual journeys as well as that of the nation.In the first book, One Crazy Summer, the girls left their Brooklyn home to spend time with their mother, a poet and free spirit living in Berkley. Back home for P.S. Stay Eleven, they tried to reconnect with family, even as that family grew, while seeing that the protest movement did not find fruitful ground in their grandmother’s heart.In this third novel, the girls go to Alabama to visit their grandmother while their father and his new wife await the birth of a new child. There are old connections to rekindle with cousins. Their grandmother and her half-sister speak of each other every day and live within a stone’s throw, but don’t speak to each other. The moon landing is nearing (and fears the older generation has of this event recall what my own elders maintained about the effect on the planet). Delphine and Vonetta try to find ways to assert their own independence in kinship with their mother while still loving the rest of their family, while Delphine is especially struck by the Jim Crow hierarchy of the rural South. When a possible tragedy looms, the girls and the rest of the family find ways to support each other they may not have tried earlier.All three books are wonderfully fun and smart books about sisters. The differences in the three parts of the United States is woven into the stories in marvelous fashion, especially the contrast to being in Alabama compared to Brooklyn. The historical settings of the books bring back those days to readers who were there and will introduce them to those who need to know what happened before they came along in an entertaining fashion.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ever since their One Crazy Summer in Oakland, the Gaither sisters have been growing up. They've gone through a lot of changes, but now it's time to go back to their roots and visit Big Ma at the family home in Alabama. There, they will see not only their grandmother Big Ma, but their great-grandmother Ma Charles, and her half-sister Ma Trotter. Those two siblings haven't spoken to each other in years, though as Delphine and her sisters will learn, they have plenty to say about each other. As Delphine discovers the surprising truth about her family history, she wonders if the two elderly sisters will ever reconcile. In the meantime, Delphine is having sister problems of her own -- but when tragedy strikes, she learns something else about the bond between family, and particularly, between sisters.I found this book just as enjoyable as the previous two. Williams-Garcia has a keen ear for dialogue and family dynamics, and her characters spring to life right off the page. If you enjoyed the previous two books about the Gaither sisters, you don't want to miss this one.