Cynthia Voigt

Dicey Tillerman, aged 12, and her younger siblings find themselves abandoned by their mother in a car in a mall parking lot. They were supposed to be traveling as a family from their home in Providence, RI, to their Mom's Aunt Cilla's home in Bridgeport, CT, when Mom announced that she needed to stop at a mall, and would be right back. Times had been tough with no father at home, but Aunt Cilla would surely help them out...that was the reason for the trip. When Mom did not return to the car show more after most of a day and a night, Dicey took matters into her own hands, and decided that going on to Bridgeport was the only option they had. With a map, very little money, and a lot of determination, she resolved to keep her brothers and sister together, and get them to Aunt Cilla's...on foot. Voigt is a marvelous storyteller, a masterful problem solver, and a genius at creating separate personalities for four remarkable little humans. If she didn't walk most of the children's route from Providence to Bridgeport herself, I'd be very surprised. As unlikely to succeed as her protagonists' endeavor seems (and it probably would not be possible in 2022, as it may have been in the late 1970s when the story is set), she made a believer out of me. One or two tiny quibbles with factual situations that I question the legitimacy of, but nothing that would swamp the entire enterprise. The ending was as good as it could be, without a scrap of sentimental BS (but I might have almost shed a little tear) I absolutely loved this book. show less

Think carefully, that's the advice Jean Wainwright always gets from her beloved Aunt Constance, Jean's guardian and headmistress at the boarding school where she lives. It's advice that proves valuable when Jean finds herself spending the summer far from home, sorting out family papers for the reclusive Mr. Thiel, a trustee of Aunt Constance's school and the widower of her childhood friend Irene Callender.
At Mr. Thiel's isolated country estate, Jean is surrounded by bewildering questions show more from the past. Why is there such hatred between Mr. Thiel and his late wife's brother? Was her death an accident? And what happened to their child, who disappeared after Irene Thiel's death? Do the answers lie in the Callender papers? And will searching for the answers put Jean's own life in jeopardy? show less

When we catch up to the Tillerman family they are in Maryland living with the grandmother they never knew they had. Dicey is a teenager starting to come of age with homework and budding albeit reluctant friendships. Her brothers, James and Sammy, are in thriving in school. Only sister Maybeth is a musical prodigy. Her family is becoming self-sufficient. Everything should be great for Dicey. Her family is not on the run. They have a roof over their heads every night. They have food on the show more table at every meal. They have someone to look after them. But, for Dicey something is wrong. For the longest time she had control over her family. Keeping them together and safe was all she knew how to do. When her siblings start exercising independence Dicey isn't sure how to feel about it. She has to learn to let them go their own way, together but apart. At the same time Dicey deals with the confusion of becoming a young woman without her mother's guidance. My favorite moments were whenever Gram's hardened exterior began to soften as each child reached for her love. show less

After reading this, I'm surprised it was Dicey's Song and not this book that won the Newbery. I knew going into this that the book would be intense - if one has read the previous installments in the cycle, they'd know Bullet was killed in Vietnam and that when Abigail Tillerman found out, she threw her phone through the window of the telephone company. So, I braced myself.

I was not prepared for the racial tensions, which was rampant during the time this took place. Nor was I prepared for show more how deeply Bullet's emotional turmoil ran. This was the first book in which Ab's husband, John, as well as Liza's children's father, Frank, are introduced. Both are more off-putting than previously mentioned. What I really wasn't prepared for was how much I would care for Bullet. At first, I wanted him to connect with someone, anyone at all. Then, I wanted to scream at him during a pivotal scene with his dog (a scene that almost made me abandon the book, I was crying so badly). I smiled at his running success and his kind-of partnership with Tamer Shipp, whose foreshadowing (to those that haven't read previous books) prophesy about Bullet pierced my heart:

"You're going to end up really great or dead."

It made the epilogue of the book, Ab received the news that her son has been killed all the more poignant. Honestly, I think this is the best book of the series (that I've read so far). It is heartwrenching and profound and falls into the elements of it setting perfectly. I would definitely recommend this for upper middle/high schoolers. show less