Dicey’s Song is not the only sequel to win a Newbery award. Just ticking off some of the ones we’ve read so far: The High King is the conclusion of a multi-volume fantasy epic. The Grey King is, uh, also a late entry in a multi-volume fantasy epic. Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry is also a sequel, although it clearly stands on its own as a story, and is less a continuation of a single storyline and more a standalone that exists within the larger literary universe of the fictional Logan family. Walk Two Moons is less a sequel and more a spinoff, from Creech’s more directly comedic novel Absolutely Normal Chaos; the protagonist of the latter novel is Mary Lou Finney, and Sal the protagonist of Walk Two Moons is a classmate and minor character in Chaos. But you could read Walk Two Moons without ever having touched Chaos, and in fact that’s what most readers did, because Chaos wasn’t an especially strong seller and couldn’t even find a publisher in the States until after Walk Two Moons became a hit several years later1. A Year Down Yonder? Also technically a sequel, to Newbery finalist A Long Way From Chicago, although Chicago was less a ‘novel’ and more a collection of short stories spread out over decades, whereas Yonder focuses on one of those specific characters in one of those specific time periods. So Yonder also stands alone.
But Dicey’s Song is also a sequel, and it doesn’t stand alone. It is actually pretty challenging to fully understand Dicey’s Song without reading Cynthia Voigt’s preceding novel, 1981’s Homecoming, which kicked off the acclaimed seven-volume “Tillerman Cycle” of novels. I did not realize this until I had finished Dicey’s Song, or even realize that Dicey’s Song was a sequel in the first place, because - and I’m very sorry if this is the first time that you’re learning this - I’m not very bright.
I feel like a sequel to Johnny Tremain has potential. I want Johnny to go to war, I think he's probably pretty young to be a soldier but it's easy for me to envision him lying about his age to go join the Continental army. I think there's some really great tension we can explore there, about how in the first novel Johnny was this hothead who learned to believe in something bigger than himself, and in the second novel he learns the cost of that something bigger as he sees firsthand that war is hell, something akin to Rifles For Watie. Put him in Valley Forge in the winter and see if he comes out stronger. Forbes was a professional historian and Pulitzer laureate, I have no doubt that she would have provided plenty of tidbits about how the Continental army lived and fought and suffered. By the end of the real novel, Johnny Tremain had committed himself to the ideal “that a man can stand up”, and I would want to see just how hard we could shake that commitment. I would want to be pushed to think about what we really have here in America, what people like Johnny paid to get it, and whether it was worth it. To be fair, that was kind of what I was thinking of when I wrote the first essay about Johnny Tremain.
Here's what happens in Homecoming, the novel that Voigt wrote prior to Dicey's Song: thirteen-year-old Dicey Tillerman, along with her three younger siblings, is abandoned by her mother in the parking lot of a Connecticut shopping mall. We later learn that Dicey's mother has a severe mental illness. Dicey realizes, after several hours in the car, that mom isn't coming back, so she leads her now-unhoused-and-orphaned family on a search to find any other living relative they can, just to get off the streets and keep their stomachs full. Dicey even reflects on the experience early in Dicey’s Song:
“Dicey worried about that too, and had worried all her life, because at thirteen, she was the oldest. That worry about food had been her single biggest worry all summer long, when they had traveled down here, after Momma disappeared. The other worries— about what James was thinking, because what James thought in his head told him what to do; about whether or not Maybeth was retarded as people claimed, or only shy, slow, and frightened, which was what Dicey thought; about why Sammy was so angry he hit out and didn’t mind how much the person he fought with hurt him;— those worries, and worries about how much Dicey should give up for her brothers and sisters in order to have any kind of home together— or if she was driving them too hard; about how many miles they had covered and where they were ever going— all the other worries had come and gone.”
Homecoming was, apparently, the bleakest possible variant on the “runaway story” genre: kids get to assert their independence and face adversity, but in the very dark context of their mother running away and these four children trying not to freeze to death. Voigt's a good writer, and the four Tillermans are well-constructed variants on children's lit archetypes: the reluctant big sibling, the hothead, the nerd, the girl with an unspecified learning disability. But oh boy, what a bleak story that I would never want to read for entertainment. Thankfully, the four children do, by the end of the novel, find their maternal grandmother in Maryland, who decides to adopt them. Dicey's Song is the story of what happens after the runaway story, after the bleak adventure reaches something that we could call a happy ending.
I would, personally, be interested to see the rats of NIMH take over the world. Not just because rats waging war on the human race would be an entertaining read, but because the rats seem to have it figured out. They're trying to build a pacifist, agrarian, post-scarcity society. You take away, from your first read of Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, that Nicodemus and his comrades actually have everything figured out better than industrialized human society does. I want to see the human race grossed out by the rats, and then slowly realizing that the rats actually have it together. Would there be humans who would ally themselves with the rats and work to accelerate our journey to our new and glorious era? I kind of want to know. Don Bluth is still alive, albeit retired, but surely we can get him back for one last ride.
What happens after the happy ending, as it turns out, is a lot of paperwork. Dicey and her siblings have to enroll in a new school and try to connect with other kids, and Gram has to complete the adoption process. Little sister Maybeth has trouble learning anything at school, but she may be a musical prodigy so her music teaching takes a liking to her. Sammy has to work on anger management techniques so he can stop getting into fights at school. Dicey is wrongly accused of plagiarism and eventually apologized to by her teacher; she also buys a new dress at one point. It is a slow, heavy story, one where everyone worries and frets and has trouble sleeping and just tries to do the best they can. And Gram has to do the best she can all over again in a difficult parenting situation:
““Gram,” Dicey said, her voice so loud Gram’s eyes popped open. “But you knew how to do everything.” “I knew how to do nothing,” Gram told her. “I just did everything. There’s a difference. You should know that.””
Life is a grind and a slog and it's the kind of thing I occasionally try to escape by, you know, reading children's books.
Bud, Not Buddy, now there's a story I would gladly read a sequel to. I mean, Bud has found his family, so the conflict is presumably going to be lower-stakes this time around - I don't know, maybe the jazz musicians are going to fill out a bunch of adoption paperwork - but I want to see Bud living with a family of traveling jazz musicians and coming up with new Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself. I want more glancing blows from history as the Depression continues on and the labor movement picks up steam. Bud, Not Buddy is a story that you read and all you want is more of it.
Dicey's Song is full of big, heavy, adult feelings. At one point, we get the line “Dicey had a picture in her head of Sammy putting on a mask every morning, to wear all day long. It was a heavy iron mask, and he pulled it around his own face and bolted it closed.” And if that's not grown-up enough for you, here's Dicey talking to Gram after visiting her mother in the hospital:
“You tell me to let go. But you told me to reach out, you told me to hold on. How can I do all those things together? Gram?” Gram’s eyes took a minute to really see Dicey, as if she had been thinking about other things. “It’s nice to know you listen,” she answered. “It would be nicer if you explained,” Dicey snapped. “How can I explain?” Gram demanded. “How can I explain what I don’t know?” “Then why did you say?” “Because it’s what I learned,” Gram told her.
And towards the end, here's Dicey realizing she will be consumed by worry for the rest of her life:
“Dicey considered her Uncle John. She wasn’t sure, any more, about what she ought to do, if she ought to try to do anything, to find him. She wasn’t even sure about what she wanted to do. She let her eyes fall from the page and rested them on her hands, as if — she was a boat and dropping anchor to let the storm blow itself out. The confusion was like a windy storm. And then she smiled to herself, because she had a suspicion that the confusion wasn’t a storm that would blow itself out, it was going to be a permanent condition. Well, she guessed she could get used to it.”
The closest Newbery medalist, emotionally, to this one is likely Jacob Have I Loved, another novel for children and about children suffocating under the weight of existential dread. Both are well-written and built around compelling characters. But this is the kind of book for readers who finished a book about four unhoused children trying not to starve, and asked “is there any more like this?” As an adult consumed by worry and stress a lot of the time, I have other Newbery medalists, and imagined sequels to Newbery medalists, that I would pick up first.
Newburied is a series by Tony Ginocchio on the history of the Newbery Medal and a whole bunch of other stuff related to it. You can subscribe via Substack to get future installments sent to your inbox directly. The next installment will cover the 2021 medalist, When You Trap A Tiger by Tae Keller.
For some reason, Sharon Creech had a strong readership in the UK before writing a hit book in the US, and is in fact the first American to ever win the Carnegie Medal, which is the British equivalent of the Newbery, even though the Carnegie that the medal is named after is the famous steel magnate and library philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who, though he was born in Scotland, lived in the States from the age of 12 until he died.