Dicey's Song
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''Dicey's Song'' is a novel by Cynthia Voigt. It won the
Newbery Medal The John Newbery Medal, frequently shortened to the Newbery, is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the author of "the most distinguished cont ...
for excellence in American
children's literature Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader. Children's ...
in 1983.


Plot

Picking up where ''
Homecoming Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back alumni or other former members of an organization to celebrate the organization's existence. It is a tradition in many high schools, colleges, and churches in the United States, Canada and Liberia. ...
'' left off, Dicey Tillerman and her three siblings, Sammy, Maybeth, and James, are now living with their crazy and widowed grandmother Abigail Tillerman, or Gram as the children call her, on her farm just outside
Crisfield, Maryland Crisfield is a city in Somerset County, Maryland, United States, located on the Tangier Sound, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. The population was 2,515 at the 2020 census. It is included in the Salisbury, Maryland-Delaware Metropolitan Statist ...
. Because the Tillermans' mom just left them in the parking lot in
Provincetown Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Province ...
, the children have the chance to start living a completely new life in their new family home, even though several of the major issues of ''Homecoming'' are not resolved. Dicey has trouble letting go of her siblings enough to let Gram take over as the parent character. She also worries about her mother Liza, who is catatonic and seriously ill in a
psychiatric hospital Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, dissociat ...
in
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
. While in their new school, the Tillermans make several new friends: Mr. Lingerle, the elementary school's music teacher, who begins giving Maybeth
piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
lessons; Mina, a friendly African-American girl who goes to school with Dicey; and Jeff, a high school student who likes to play the
guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...
. To help Gram support the family, Dicey starts to work for Millie Tydings, the owner of the local grocery store, whom Gram has known since childhood. Gram soon comes to terms with having to accept
Social Security Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...
payments to help with the costs of raising her four grandchildren. She also must confront and reexamine her past, particularly her relationship with her deceased husband and her three children. Gram refuses to discuss her past with the children, and their attempts to find out about it by climbing into the attic are met with anger. As the children settle into the routines of their new school and after-school jobs, Gram receives a number of letters from the psychiatric hospital in which the children's catatonic mother resides. The letters do not appear to bring hopeful news, although Gram does not discuss their contents with the children. Dicey is frustrated that Gram will not open up and talk about her past, or their mother's past as a child growing up with her two siblings in the same house that Dicey and her brothers and sister are now living. She is also frustrated that her grandmother will not tell her what is in the letters from Boston, beyond the fact that her mother is no better. In December, the psychiatric hospital in Boston calls and informs Gram that Liza is in a critical state and may not live much longer. Dicey and Gram travel to Boston, and find Liza catatonic, not responding to any treatment. Liza soon dies and, since they can't afford the cost of a funeral or of transporting Liza's body from Boston to Crisfield, Gram and Dicey decide to cremate her. Dicey is given a hand-carved wooden box by the owner of a local gift store who is touched by her situation. When Dicey and Gram arrive back in Crisfield, the family buries the wooden box containing their mother's ashes under the
paper mulberry The paper mulberry (''Broussonetia papyrifera'', syn. ''Morus papyrifera'' L.) is a species of flowering plant in the family Moraceae. It is native to Asia,Kirkus Reviews'' said, "Through all the hardships, comforts, and passages, Dicey remains the sturdy presence we met in Homecoming; she and Gram make a strong, crusty pair, and the other children come along according to their observantly individualized courses. A resilient family and a gratifying journey's end." In a retrospective essay about the Newbery Medal-winning books from 1976 to 1985, literary critic
Zena Sutherland Zena Sutherland (1915 – June 12, 2002) was an American reviewer of children's literature. She is best known for her contributions to the '' Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books'' and as the author of the library science textbook ''Child ...
wrote, "The characterization is consistent and perceptive, the setting solidly established, and the plot elements are firmly knit by a writing style smooth enough to compensate for the occasional lag in pace that comes with iteration."


References

{{Newbery Medal 1982 American novels American young adult novels Newbery Medal–winning works Novels set in Maryland Crisfield, Maryland Atheneum Books books Eastern Shore of Maryland in fiction