Originally posted October 24, 2003
Secret Life of Bees (not actually on any of these award lists!)
Come a Stranger; Sons from Afar; Building Blocks---- all by Cynthia Voigt
OK, here I clear my recent reading list of various tangents that are often by Newbery authors, but not actually medal winners...!
The Secret Life of Bee's- I read this one because it's the Pittsboro Libraries project to get every one in the community to read this book in a Community Read project. I really enjoyed it a lot, and actually think teen readers would like it very much as well. The very beginning of the book is brutal and I almost wondered if I'd ever like it, with such a harsh start, but it quickly turns into a very good and gentle story. I wouldn't recommend it for young readers though for this reason. I think anyone 14 on up would do fine with it and some younger ones if they had some one to talk about it with could also do fine.
It's basically a coming of age story involving a girl who is being raised by her father as her mother is dead. Her dad is not a kind man, and she runs away along with a black woman who worked in their home. They end up finding a safe haven that leads to the disclosing of many aspects of the girls personal history that she was in search of. Plenty of thought provoking stuff on race relations in the south, womanhood, sisterhood, mothers and daughters, etc.
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Now I begin the book reports on my massive Cythia Voigt tangent. After loving Dicey's Song so much I wanted to read more from this author. There are a couple of other books that follow the Tillerman family. . .
Come a Stranger is about Dicey's good friend Mina, who is African American. It deals with her dream of being a ballet dancer, the painful extinguishment of that dream, and the following rebuilding of her self concept and self esteem. It also deals in depth with the experience of an African American girl in a elite white world (the world of the dance camp she had won a scholarship to) and the many tensions and conflicts with in that experience. It's a good read. I'd suggest this one for 10 and up. Nothing scary that I remember, but I think the issues involved would be more of interest to the older reader.
Sons from Afar is the story of the two boys in the Tillerman family. Having lost their mother, and lived most of their lives with their Grandmother, the two Tillerman boys finally face the question of their father and go off in search of him, and really, in hope of learning more of themselves. The journey itself answers many of their questions and they eventually, after some dead ends and a harrowing adventure, come to peace with the issues at hand. I'd call this one for the 10 or 12 and up crowd. There is some scary stuff in the final encounter in the search.
Building Blocks is a different kind of a book, not about the Tillerman's and with more of a twist of fantasy than the other Cynthia Voigt books I read. It is about a boy who's mother and father are in conflict about what to do with an inheritance, and really in conflict in their relationship at the core. The boy ends up time traveling back to meet and know his dad as a boy, and returns with a much fuller understanding of his father. This might work for a slightly younger reader, maybe 8 or 9 and up if reading with a parent, but I still think it would be best appreciated by the 10 and older crowd. Her books are kind of introspective by nature and I'm not sure all the emotional, relational stuff would really be appreciated by the younger ones, but maybe I'm underestimating. There's some mildly scary stuff in this one, a getting lost in a cave scene, and some just mean dysfunctional family stuff in the family of the dad.
All in all, Cynthia Voigts mark as a writer is the depth with which she knows and presents her characters. They are stories about people. I found all her books good, but Dicey's Song (the medal winner) easily the very very best of the batch. She has a Newbery Honor book as well, A Solitary Blue, so I'll have to get my hands on that one eventually.
What are you reading?
Love, Louise
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