Cecile's home in Oakland, California, is described in detail in the chapter titled “Green Stucco House.” Delphine observes that the exterior is “green” and “prickly,” a style which their mother introduces as stucco. The house is situated in a garden that is dry but neatly kept. A carport stands to one side of the house, but the children do not immediately know what this is, and to them, it just looks like a slab of concrete “with a roof over it.” It is Cecile who explains that this is a carport, even though there is no car in it.

When the girls walk inside, Delphine is surprised to see that the house is not a greater expression of Cecile’s freedom and that there is no “writing on the walls” or “strings and strings of words tapped out from her pencil onto the walls.” On the contrary, Cecile’s approach to décor appears to be clean and simple, with the walls “painted a yellow beige.”

The children are directed to a room at the back of the house, across the hall from the bathroom. The bedroom, which the children are to share, is kitted out with a bed with “a blue cover,” a headboard, a dresser, a floor lamp, and a day bed, which Delphine and her sisters pull out from under the main bed.

What does the outside of Cecile's house look like in One Crazy Summer?

In Rita Williams-Garcia's award-winning young reader's novel One Crazy Summer, when the three main characters, Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern, arrive at their mother Cecile's house in Oakland, California, they see that her house is made of green stucco that looks like "green frosting." Cecile told her children that she had "applied the stucco herself." The house is further described as looking prickly, like a green pickle, and its surrounding lawn is dried out. In addition, there is a roofed carport with no car and a "baby palm tree" that looks out of place next to the stucco and the landscape of the neighboring houses. Cecile's house is also in a poor neighborhood.

However, the house is far better than what they expected. Due to the poor relationship between their paternal grandmother, whom they call Big Ma, and Cecile, Big Ma had mislead them into believing Cecile lived in worse conditions. Big Ma resented Cecile for both her extreme politics and for having abandoned her children. As a result, Big Ma had told the three girls that their mother "lived in a hole in the wall" and slept on a park bench. The eldest daughter, Delphine, was especially relieved to see that Big Ma's description was untrue though Delphine could clearly see from the house that Cecile is a rebel.