Sent down south with her seven-month-old son to live with her aunt and uncle, 14-year-old Gayle is angry and resentful. It's bad enough being away from the girls in the neighborhood and her boyfriend, Troy, but her cousin, Cookie is too prissy and perfect for words, her uncle is a stern minister, and her aunt won't even watch the baby for her. Exasperated and sometimes at odds with these members of her family, Gayle finds the only bright spot is Great, her great grandmother, and even she takes some getting used to. Great is daunting, but also sharp and sassy, something Gayle understands. Great is also the keeper of the family story, and Gayle finds herself drawn to the old woman whose words offer her a sense of the past that is larger than herself even as it embraces her. A sometimes funny, always powerful story of an African-American family finding healing in unity: one with another, present with past. In Gayle, with her eager bravado on the subject of sex and immature understanding of love, Rita Williams-Garcia's creates a painfully realistic, stunningly accurate account of teenage sexuality and the need for belonging and love. Honor Book, 1995 CCBC Coretta Scott King Award Discussion: Writing (Ages 13-16)

Rita Williams-Garcia’s masterful and bold Coretta Scott King Honor Book is fresh, funny, and powerfully relevant. This novel by a master storyteller and Newbery Honor-winning author is about one girl’s discovery of her family history—and her own place within it.

When fourteen-year-old Gayle gets in trouble with a boy—again—her mother doesn’t give her a choice: Gayle is getting sent away from New York to her family down South, along with her baby, José.

In a small town in Georgia, there is nowhere to go but church, nothing to do but chores, and no friends except her goody-goody, big-boned, kneesock-wearing cousin, Cookie. Gayle is stuck cleaning up after Great, the old family matriarch who stays upstairs in her bed.

But the more she spends time with Cookie and Great, Gayle learns about her family’s history and secrets, stretching all the way back through the preachers and ancestors of the past. And slowly, the stories of her roots begin to change how Gayle sees her future.

Like Sisters on the Homefront is a fast, gritty read about mistakes, second chances, and family. A strong choice for summer reading and for sparking conversation in the classroom or at home.