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Moving on to the Tillermans
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From: Megan Schliesman <Schliesman>
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 09:17:27 -0500
Let's turn our attention now to Cynthia Voigt's books about the Tillerman family. There are four books that Voigt wrote about Dicey Tillerman and her immediate family: Homecoming (1981), Dicey's Song (1982), Sons from Afar (1987), and Seventeen Against the Dealer (1989), all published by Atheneum. Three others books that tie into the Tillerman cycle are A Solitary Blue (Atheneum, 1983), about Dicey's boyfriend Jeff Greene, The Runner (Atheneum, 1985); which goes back in time to tell about the young adulthood of Dicey's uncle, known as Bullet, who later died in the Vietnam War; and Come a Stranger (1986), about Dicey's friend Mina Smith, a young African American girl who aspires to dance and spends a summer at a dance camp only to discover she was chosen based solely on being black, to meet a quota, rather than on who she is and what she can do as a dancer.
In a 1989 interview in Booklist magazine (v.85, n. 16, April 15, 1989), Hazel Rochman asked Voigt if she know when she wrote the first book that it was going to be a series. Voigt replied: "No....I work with outlines and I had this thing blocked out in outline for Homecoming, and then somehow the character of Grams sprang into my mind, fullblown, so the book became twice as long. Then I knew I had to write Dicey's Song and that completes the mother's story. And Jeff came into the second book, and I knew I had to write his story next, though everyone was telling me the story they thought I should be writing. And then I always knew Bullet's story: The Runner strikes me as the core of the whole series. My working plan for the last one was always that it was going to be Dicey and Jeff, and that was where I thought I wanted it to end." She went on to note that while she's never sure that she's reached the end, "I've felt thiws way for a few years. I think there's a danger with a series that you take your own characters fro granted and don't do as well by them, and I don't want that to happen."
Let's begin by getting your responses to either individuals books in the series or the cycle as a whole. What strikes you about these books about the Tillermans' and their friends? Characters? Imagery? The stories themselves? What elements do you--or young readers--find most powerful in these novels?
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education UW-Madison 608&2?03 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Fri 14 May 1999 09:17:27 AM CDT
Date: Fri, 14 May 1999 09:17:27 -0500
Let's turn our attention now to Cynthia Voigt's books about the Tillerman family. There are four books that Voigt wrote about Dicey Tillerman and her immediate family: Homecoming (1981), Dicey's Song (1982), Sons from Afar (1987), and Seventeen Against the Dealer (1989), all published by Atheneum. Three others books that tie into the Tillerman cycle are A Solitary Blue (Atheneum, 1983), about Dicey's boyfriend Jeff Greene, The Runner (Atheneum, 1985); which goes back in time to tell about the young adulthood of Dicey's uncle, known as Bullet, who later died in the Vietnam War; and Come a Stranger (1986), about Dicey's friend Mina Smith, a young African American girl who aspires to dance and spends a summer at a dance camp only to discover she was chosen based solely on being black, to meet a quota, rather than on who she is and what she can do as a dancer.
In a 1989 interview in Booklist magazine (v.85, n. 16, April 15, 1989), Hazel Rochman asked Voigt if she know when she wrote the first book that it was going to be a series. Voigt replied: "No....I work with outlines and I had this thing blocked out in outline for Homecoming, and then somehow the character of Grams sprang into my mind, fullblown, so the book became twice as long. Then I knew I had to write Dicey's Song and that completes the mother's story. And Jeff came into the second book, and I knew I had to write his story next, though everyone was telling me the story they thought I should be writing. And then I always knew Bullet's story: The Runner strikes me as the core of the whole series. My working plan for the last one was always that it was going to be Dicey and Jeff, and that was where I thought I wanted it to end." She went on to note that while she's never sure that she's reached the end, "I've felt thiws way for a few years. I think there's a danger with a series that you take your own characters fro granted and don't do as well by them, and I don't want that to happen."
Let's begin by getting your responses to either individuals books in the series or the cycle as a whole. What strikes you about these books about the Tillermans' and their friends? Characters? Imagery? The stories themselves? What elements do you--or young readers--find most powerful in these novels?
Megan
Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education UW-Madison 608&2?03 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Fri 14 May 1999 09:17:27 AM CDT
