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Dicey's Song is a novel by Cynthia Voigt. It won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1983.

Plot

Picking up where "Homecoming" left off, Dicey Tillerman and her three siblings, James, Maybeth, and Sammy, are now living with their widowed grandmother Abigail Tillerman, or Gram as the children call her, on her farm just outside of Crisfield, Maryland. In Provincetown, 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 worried about her mother Liza, who is catatonic and seriously ill in a psychiatric hospital in Boston.

While in their new school, the Tillermans make several new friends: Mr. Lingerle, the elementary school's music teacher, who begins giving Maybeth piano lessons; Mina, a friendly African-American girl who goes to school with Dicey; and Jeff, a loner high school student who likes to play the guitar. 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 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.

Meanwhile, all four children face major changes at school. James is placed in a special class for gifted children; however, wanting badly to make friends and fit in, he draws back from exploring his own intellect at school and instead tries to conform to what he thinks his peers will find acceptable. Sammy, who has in the past tended to be a troublemaker and get into fights, appears to have transformed into a quiet and well-behaved child. Dicey and Gram soon realize that this is because Sammy blames his previous bad behavior for his mother’s illness, and wants to make a fresh start with Gram. Maybeth initially seems to be doing well and making friends, but her inability to learn and keep up with her peers at school soon causes problems. By working together to try to understand the problems Maybeth faces (it is hinted that she may have dyslexia), Dicey, James and Gram start to help her learn by teaching her to read at home. Dicey, on the other hand, does not care about school, seeing it only as a "necessary evil" she must endure every day before she can go to her evening job and then home to her family. Her dislike of school grows with several negative experiences, including the school's insistence that she take a detested home economics class instead of the mechanical drawing course she is interested in, and an incident in which her English teacher accuses Dicey of plagiarizing a deeply personal essay she writes about her mother. During a daylong shopping trip, Dicey and Gram discuss the children's difficulties and Gram makes an effort to explain adolescence and growing up to Dicey, who is initially reluctant but accepts and is grateful for Gram's efforts to understand and care for her. Dicey and jeff become close friends and seem to be building up a relasionship throughout the novel. In one point Jeff asks Dicey to the dance, but she rejects saying she is too young.

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 tree in their front yard, which to the Tillermans is symbolic of family in its fragility and its beauty.

Product Description
A NEWBERRY MEDAL WINNER
Keeping her family together is what thirteen-year-old Dicey does best. But now that all four Tillerman children have found a new home with their grandmother, Dicey has to learn the hard lesson of letting go. Dicey's got other problems than finding her new role in the family: she's bored with everyone and everything at school and doesn't think anyone can tell her anything she wants to know. But slowly, Dicey discovers that everyone has something to teach, and life is a lesson that doesn't get easier . . .
From the Publisher
This is the sequel to HOMECOMING and is the winner of the winner of the Newberry Award. Here Dicey (our courageous protagonist) and her siblings are adjusting to life on a farm with their grandmother. But Dicey has new conflicts--puberty and the longing for her dying mother. Of the 300 top selling mass market books Ballantine has published in the past year, DICEY'S SONG ranks as number 44. Free Teacher's Guide available (394-21872).

Product Details
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Fawcett (April 12, 1987)
Language: English