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From: Kathy Isaacs <isaacs>
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 13:12:08 -0400
Ouch! I always hate to hear it when someone has been assigned a book and disliked it, in case it was the act of assigning that destroyed the relationship between the book and the reader. I have assigned Homecoming (and a several of the others, over the years) to a large number of middle school students most of whom seem to have enjoyed the books thoroughly. In the past 5 years Homecoming has been the second book read in my sixth grade class, and I've accompanied it with a reading aloud of a child's version of the Odyssey (a big golden book version, actually). Students love making connections between Odysseus' adventures and Dicey's. But in the end what draws them is the characters Voigt has created. Different students identify with different children, for reasons they are eager to explain. Dicey, Maybeth, James, and Sammy are distinct, realistic, and not always kids you like -- just like real kids.
Many of my students go on to read the sequels and every year annotations of Dicey's Song or Solitary Blue turn up in the suggested reading booklet we do in the spring -- proof that they not only enjoyed the sequels but would like to recommend them to others. Most readers, though, do not seem to have the stamina to go on much beyond the first few books.
Partly, I think, this is because the later books speak more to an older reader. The last one, Seventeen Against the Dealer, is genuinely about a young adult...Dicey as a high school graduate. While I, as an adult, STILL want to know more about what has happened to the children in that family, that comes out of my own adult pleasure in watching children grow up. That's not as engaging a theme for children as the earlier family and school issues are.
Date: Sun, 16 May 1999 13:12:08 -0400
Ouch! I always hate to hear it when someone has been assigned a book and disliked it, in case it was the act of assigning that destroyed the relationship between the book and the reader. I have assigned Homecoming (and a several of the others, over the years) to a large number of middle school students most of whom seem to have enjoyed the books thoroughly. In the past 5 years Homecoming has been the second book read in my sixth grade class, and I've accompanied it with a reading aloud of a child's version of the Odyssey (a big golden book version, actually). Students love making connections between Odysseus' adventures and Dicey's. But in the end what draws them is the characters Voigt has created. Different students identify with different children, for reasons they are eager to explain. Dicey, Maybeth, James, and Sammy are distinct, realistic, and not always kids you like -- just like real kids.
Many of my students go on to read the sequels and every year annotations of Dicey's Song or Solitary Blue turn up in the suggested reading booklet we do in the spring -- proof that they not only enjoyed the sequels but would like to recommend them to others. Most readers, though, do not seem to have the stamina to go on much beyond the first few books.
Partly, I think, this is because the later books speak more to an older reader. The last one, Seventeen Against the Dealer, is genuinely about a young adult...Dicey as a high school graduate. While I, as an adult, STILL want to know more about what has happened to the children in that family, that comes out of my own adult pleasure in watching children grow up. That's not as engaging a theme for children as the earlier family and school issues are.
-- Kathy Isaacs Edmund Burke School isaacs at saber.towson.eduReceived on Sun 16 May 1999 12:12:08 PM CDT
