Dicey's Song

Author: Cynthia Voigt

Originally Published: 1982
Length: 196 pages
Award: Newbery Medal
Personal Enjoyment Rating: 4.5/5
Amazon Rating: 4/5

Dicey's Song picks up right where Homecoming leaves off--the Tillerman children tentatively settled in with a brusque and independent grandmother who has cut herself off from the surrounding community. Gram warily (but deep inside lovingly) welcomes her grandchildren, who have come with their own experiences of being shunned by their peers in the past for having an unconventional family situation. Gram and the children come to meet a whole cast of characters in the novel who are likewise loners or unusual in some way. Obviously, this theme is woven throughout the book, and I egocentrically love it because I can identify with it. And I would imagine that most people have felt at sometime or other that they just didn't "fit in." I grew up in a loving home in which they query was often made, "Was she switched at birth?" I took an online personality test as an adult with these results: "People who know you can only desribe you as possibly being from a different planet or universe." My mother wholeheartedly agreed. I have come to neither love nor hate whatever it is that makes me different, but accepting that it just IS, and it is not an excuse or reason to be antisocial. I think this is one of the lessons Dicey learns as she gradually opens herself up to others, despite the very real fear of vulnerability. She also learns the tricky art of "give and take" in relationships. In attempts to reach out to others and receive in return, the results are rarely neat and tidy, but necessary all the same. As Gram has learned through her own mistakes:

"I got to thinking—when it was too late—you have to reach out to people. To your family, too. You can't just let them sit there, you should put your hand out. If they slap it back, well you reach out again if you care enough. If you don't care enough, you forget about them, if you can."