P.S. BE ELEVEN

In this outstanding sequel to the award-winning novel One Crazy Summer the Gaither sisters are back in Brooklyn, where changes large and small come to their household as they grow up during the turbulent 1960s.

P.S. Be Eleven is the sequel to the award-winning One Crazy Summer and picks up immediately where that book ended. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern return to their home in Brooklyn, where they share a house with Pa, Big Ma, and Uncle Darnell, who has recently returned from serving in Vietnam. As the eldest, Delphine has always been responsible for her two younger sisters. But after spending the summer in Oakland soaking up the message of empowerment, Fern and Vonetta are beginning to spread their wings and are asserting themselves and agitating for their own independence. It is time they started doing things for themselves, and Delphine needs to learn how to let go and let them grow up. Many changes come to the Gaither household: Pa gets married and brings his new wife home, Uncle Darnell is deeply troubled after his tour in Vietnam, and Big Ma cannot keep up with all the change in her home and in the world at large. There is a new singing group called the Jackson Five that has captured the girls’ attention, Shirley Chisholm’s running for Congress, and Delphine attends her first dance. Throughout the year, the girls write letters to their mother in Oakland, whose advice to Delphine is always to “be eleven,” even after she turns twelve. Twice a National Book Award Finalist, Rita Williams-Garcia is the author of six distinguished novels for young adults: Blue Tights, Every Time a Rainbow Dies, Fast Talk on a Slow Track, Like Sisters on the Homefront, No Laughter Here, and Jumped. Like Sisters on the Homefront was named a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and a best book of the year by ALA Booklist, School Library Journal, The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, and Publishers Weekly. No Laughter Here and Jumped are among Rita’s ALA Best Books for Young Adults. Jumped and One Crazy Summer were both National Book Award Finalists. Additionally, One Crazy Summer was a Newbery Honor Book, a Coretta Scott King Award-winner, the recipient of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and a New York Times bestseller. Rita Williams-Garcia is currently a faculty member at Vermont College for the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults Program. She has two daughters, Michelle and Stephanie, and lives in Jamaica, New York. You can visit her online at ritawg.com.