P.S. Be Eleven (Gaither Sisters #2) by Rita Williams-Garcia

★★★★

This book picks up exactly where One Crazy Summer leaves off. The girls are on the plane returning to Brooklyn, and right away you can see the influence the summer in Oakland has had on them.

This book, even more than the first one, I think is best read by middle schoolers, even though the reading level might be fine for upper elementary readers. In the book, Delphine wants to read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, but her mother tells her to wait until she's older, because "[i]t is a bad thing to bite into hard fruit with little teeth. You will say bad things about the fruit when the problem is your teeth." (p. 143) I feel like that advice applies to this book as well, even if this is a children's book; if you aren't ready for it, much of it will go over your head, and you won't appreciate it properly. Also, there are some heavy ideas in this book, including drug addiction, which might be a bit much for some young readers.

I didn't find the storytelling in this book as tight as in One Crazy Summer. There's a lot going on as Delphine tries to reconcile her new woke-ness with the un-woke-ness of her Pa and Big Ma. She learns that relationships can be complex; before the summer, Pa and Big Ma were the sole arbiters of right and wrong, but now she realizes that she doesn't always agree with them, and it's possible to like someone for one reason, and dislike the same person for another reason, and all the while still love them. Meanwhile, Pa has a new girlfriend, Uncle Darnell is back from Vietnam, all three sisters are crazy for the Jackson Five, Delphine is still trying to figure out her relationship with her mother via letters, and through all this, Delphine is trying to navigate the sixth grade, including "some-timey" friends (p. 63), boys, and a new teacher she wants to impress.

I have to say, I'm not crazy about how this book ended. A few loose ends were tied up, but mostly it felt abrupt. Knowing this family, you can't rightfully expect a completely happy ending, but I admit I did hope.