One Crazy Summer
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50 free One Crazy Summer trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
One Crazy Summer sends three sisters from Brooklyn across the country to spend four weeks with a mother they barely know. It is 1968, Oakland is the heart of the Black Panther movement, and the welcome they get is nothing like the one they pictured. Rita Williams-Garcia tells the story through the sharp eyes of Delphine, the eldest, who has been running her little family for years. This quiz follows the book from the bumpy flight west to the last morning at the airport. It covers the characters and their names, the daily routine at the People's Center, the Saturday trip across the bay, the arrest and the rally, along with the real history behind the story and the prizes the novel went on to collect. It suits students revising for a class test, teachers and librarians running a book club, and anyone who read the novel and wants to see how much stuck. The questions start gently and get harder, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In One Crazy Summer, the cash Pa hands his daughters is meant for a visit to which attraction?
Disneyland
Disneyland never happens: on the first night Cecile takes the cash to pay for takeout and laughs at the idea of the trip.
Q 02Which boxer does Delphine picture throwing punches in the clouds on the bumpy flight in One Crazy Summer?
Cassius Clay
Cassius Clay is the name Big Ma still uses, while Pa says Muhammad Ali, so Delphine switches between the two. Names, and who gets to choose them, matter all through the novel.
Q 03In One Crazy Summer, what does Cecile call her youngest daughter instead of using the name Fern?
Little Girl
Little Girl is all Fern hears from her mother until the last morning of the visit. The coldness goes back to a family quarrel over what the baby should be called.
Q 04What is the name of the white baby doll that Fern carries everywhere in One Crazy Summer?
Miss Patty Cake
Miss Patty Cake goes wherever Fern goes, which is why a Panther's jab about a Black child loving a white doll stings. Fern shrugs him off and wins over the room.
Q 05What does Cecile keep in the kitchen that her daughters are forbidden to enter in One Crazy Summer?
A printing press
A printing press fills the room, and Cecile sets her poems on it letter by letter. Before the girls find out, they guess she is forging money in there.
Q 06In One Crazy Summer, what does Delphine ride down a steep hill, screaming for the first time in her life?
A go-kart
A go-kart built by Hirohito's father gives Delphine a rare minute of feeling like a child. She only agrees to ride it to prove she is not scared.
Q 07Which animal noise does Fern aim at a militant she saw being friendly with a policeman in One Crazy Summer?
Barking
Barking is Fern's taunt because the officer patted the man on the back the way an owner pats a pet. She spells it all out in a poem of her own at the rally.
Q 08Which name did Cecile choose for her youngest daughter, only to be overruled, in One Crazy Summer?
Afua
Afua slips out when Cecile finally talks to Delphine about the past. Big Ma always said Cecile walked out because she was not allowed to pick the baby's name.
Q 09What do all three sisters finally do to Cecile at the airport before flying home in One Crazy Summer?
Hug her
The girls hug her after Fern breaks out of the boarding line and leaps into her arms. Cecile, distant all month, holds them tight in return.
Q 10Which hit 1960s TV show made classmates start teasing Delphine about her first name in One Crazy Summer?
Flipper
Flipper put a clever sea mammal on television every week, and Delphine sounded close enough for playground jokes. She once fought a classmate over the teasing.
Q 11Which landmark does the pilot point out as the sisters' plane circles to land in One Crazy Summer?
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge makes sensible Delphine want to squeal. When she leans across her sister to see it, the fuss brings a stewardess over to scold her.
Q 12Which black headwear marks Cecile's taxi driver and her evening visitors as Panthers in One Crazy Summer?
Berets
Berets were part of the Black Panther uniform, worn with dark clothes. Delphine first spots one on the driver who greets her mother by an unfamiliar name.
Q 13In One Crazy Summer, which takeout noodle dish do the sisters eat nightly until Delphine insists on cooking?
Lo mein
Q 21Which woman makes Delphine and Eunice shake hands after their quarrel over Fern's doll in One Crazy Summer?
Sister Mukumbu
Sister Mukumbu teaches the daily classes at the People's Center and is the first adult in Oakland to make the girls feel welcome. She also orders a bullying helper out of her classroom.
Q 22What earns Delphine a scolding from Big Ma when she rings Brooklyn on her first evening in One Crazy Summer?
Calling collect
Calling collect put the cost on the family's bill, so the girls' proof of a safe arrival earned a telling-off. Delphine thinks twice before ringing home again.
Q 23In One Crazy Summer, Delphine is furious to find her own first name printed in which kind of book?
A dictionary
Lo mein from a nearby restaurant is dinner night after night, eaten off a tablecloth spread on the floor. A stomach ache finally sends Delphine to the grocery store.
Q 14Which name, explained in One Crazy Summer as Yoruba for 'the path', does Cecile sign her poems with?
Nzila
Nzila is the name the Panthers know her by, and she calls it a poet's name drawn from her true heritage. Delphine wonders why anyone would drop the name she was born with.
Q 15Which vehicle takes the sisters to Fisherman's Wharf on their Saturday out in One Crazy Summer?
A cable car
A cable car takes them from Chinatown to the waterfront, right on the timetable Delphine has drawn up. They wish for a camera the whole way.
Q 16In which New York borough, home to the Jamaica district, was One Crazy Summer author Rita Williams-Garcia born?
Queens
Queens is also where her family settled when she was about twelve, after a military childhood spent partly in Seaside, California. In the summer of 1968 she was Delphine's age.
Q 17One Crazy Summer was named a 2011 Honor Book for which American prize for children's literature?
Newbery Medal
The Newbery Medal committee picked it as one of four Honor Books that year. The medal itself went to Moon over Manifest.
Q 18Which of these American book prizes did One Crazy Summer win in 2011?
Coretta Scott King Award
The Coretta Scott King Award later went to both sequels as well, so every novel about the Gaither sisters has won it.
Q 19After the sisters demand a television in One Crazy Summer, what does Cecile leave in their room instead?
A radio
A radio turns up the day after Cecile calls television a box of lies. Back home the girls like to count every Black face that appears on screen.
Q 20Which regular at the People's Center does Fern expose as friendly with the police in One Crazy Summer?
Kelvin
Kelvin, nicknamed Crazy Kelvin, had lectured everyone about being Black enough, and it was Fern's doll he mocked. He slips away while the crowd cheers her.
A dictionary entry proved Cecile had not invented the name just for her, unlike the names dreamed up for her younger sisters. Delphine thought Merriam Webster was the woman who wrote it.
Q 24Which jailed co-founder of the Black Panthers stares out from the newspapers Delphine stacks in One Crazy Summer?
Huey Newton
Huey Newton was in jail over the death of an Oakland policeman, and freeing him was the Panthers' loudest demand. Big Ma thinks prison is where he belongs.
Q 25Which teenage Black Panther, shot by Oakland police in April 1968, does the rally in One Crazy Summer honour?
Bobby Hutton
Bobby Hutton was the party's first recruit and its treasurer, killed at 17 in circumstances the police and the Panthers disputed. The children at the Center know him as Li'l Bobby.
Q 26Which sequel to One Crazy Summer takes its title from Cecile's parting advice to Delphine to stay a child?
P.S. Be Eleven
P.S. Be Eleven follows the sisters home to Brooklyn. Its title repeats what Cecile tells Delphine before the girls fly home: act her age while she still can.
Q 27Which poem by Cecile do her three daughters recite on stage at the rally in One Crazy Summer?
I Birthed a Nation
I Birthed a Nation turns up while the girls tidy their mother's scattered papers, and they read it as being about them. On stage Vonetta slips an extra word into the title.
Q 28According to Big Ma in One Crazy Summer, Cecile left her family to live on the street with what for a home?
A park bench
A park bench was Big Ma's jibe, so the tidy house in Oakland comes as a shock. Cecile later admits she really did sleep rough before Pa took her in.
Q 29Which classic does Delphine read aloud to her sisters on their first night in Oakland in One Crazy Summer?
Peter Pan
Peter Pan sends Vonetta and Fern off to sleep after Delphine has bathed them both. Only then does she open a novel of her own.
Q 30What does Vonetta use to ruin Fern's doll while trying to impress new friends in One Crazy Summer?
A black marker
A black marker turns the doll's white face dark, Vonetta's way of siding with the girls who teased Fern. Delphine scrubs, but the plastic stays grey.