Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Homecoming (book review)


Homecoming, by Cynthia Voigt, is the first book in the award-winning Tillerman saga. It tells the story of the four Tillerman children, abandoned by their mother in the parking lot of a mall with nothing but a few dollars. Dicey, the oldest of the children, leads her siblings on to the small hope they have...the promise of a beautiful seaside mansion belonging to their Great-Aunt Cilla. But when they get there, the children find that Cilla has died and her daughter, Eunice, does not have the kind of home and attitude they have been looking for. The younger children are having problems at school and only their brother James is seeming to enjoy it. So the children march off, their future unknown to them. Their mysterious grandmother is the children's last hope. What will they do if they cannot even find a home there?

I enjoyed this book very much, although it wasn't perfect. I think it was a bit rash of Dicey to just head off to her mysterious grandmother with her siblings after she found life with Eunice unfitting. Normal children don't just leave their homes whenever they feel like it. She didn't even know what life was like there. But other than that, this book was an amazing journey of hardship and trust where the reader grows along with the characters.

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