1983 Newbery Medal and Honor Books

Dicey's Song

By: Cynthia Voigt

Medal Winner
NOT REVIEWED

AT THE BEGINNING of summer, Momma had abandoned them and then later been traced to an asylum where she lay unrecognizing, unknowing. So Dicey Tillerman, her brothers James and Sammy, and her sister Maybeth had spent the summer on their own on a long and difficult journey to find a home with the grandmother they’d never before met. Now that they’d moved in with Gram, their troubles, Dicey hoped, would be over.

Dicey had watched over the younger kids and brought them through—now she wanted to be just a little selfish, to refinish the old sailboat she’d found in Gram’s barn, to earn a little spending money, to adjust to Gram and to her new life in the Chesapeake Bay country that had once been her momma’s childhood home.

Yet even with the building of new ties and a new life, old problems and sorrows did not go away by themselves. None of the Tillermans, and especially not Dicey, could forget about Momma. Nor could Dicey easily relinquish her need to watch and worry over the three younger children. Though she felt a growing bond with feisty, seemingly eccentric Gram, who talked of reaching out ... and of letting go, it took a crisis to help Dicey understand what such things might mean.

This story is a sequel to Homecoming.

From the dust jacket

The Blue Sword

By: Robin McKinley

Honor
NOT REVIEWED

When Harry Crewe's father dies, she leaves her Homeland to travel east, to Istan, the last outpost of the Homelander empire, where her elder brother is stationed.

Harry is drawn to the bleak landscape of the northeast frontier, so unlike the green hills of her Homeland. The desert she stares across was once a part of the great kingdom of Damar, before the Homelanders came from over the seas. Harry wishes she might cross the sands and climb the dark mountains where no Homelander has ever set foot, where the last of the old Damarians, the Free Hillfolk, still live. She hears stories that the Free Hillfolk possess strange powers—that they work magic—that it is because of this that they remain free of the Homelander sway.

When the king of the Free Hillfolk comes to Istan to ask that the Homelanders and the Hillfolk set their enmity aside to fight a common foe, the Homelanders are reluctant to trust his word, and even more reluctant to believe his tales of the Northerners: that they are demonkind, not human.

Harry's destiny lies in the far mountains that she once wished to climb, and she will ride to the battle with the North in the Hill-king's army, bearing the Blue Sword, Gonturan, the chiefest treasure of the Hill-king's house and the subject of many legends of magic and mystery.

From the dust jacket

Doctor De Soto

By: William Steig
Illustrated by: William Steig

Honor
NOT REVIEWED

"Doctor De Soto, the dentist, did very good work." With the aid of his able assistant, Mrs. De Soto, he copes with the toothaches of animals large and small. His expertise is so great that his fortunate patients never feel any pain.

Since he's a mouse, Doctor De Soto refuses to treat "dangerous" animals—that is, animals who have a taste for mice. But one day a fox shows up and begs for relief from the tooth that's killing him. How can the kind-hearted De Sotos turn him away? But how can they make sure that the fox doesn't give in to his baser instincts once his tooth is fixed? Those clever De Sotos will find a way.

From the dust jacket

Graven Images

By: Paul Fleischman
Illustrated by: Andrew Glass

Honor
NOT REVIEWED

What happens to people who put their faith in graven images?

• Prim Miss Frye will lose her son to the sea, and her terrible secret to a servant.
• Nicholas, the apprentice cobbler, will pursue his courtship of errors with help of his patron saint.
• The spirit of a dead man will show the arrogant stone carver Zorelli that he, too, has feet of clay.

In these three tales of cherished figures—a wooden boy, a copper saint, and the marble statue commissioned by a specter—Paul Fleischman offers mystery, comic mishaps, and chilling revelations. With eerily shaded illustrations by Andrew Glass, GRAVEN IMAGES is an intriguing collection of stories—a finely woven tapestry of human folly, shot with threads of the supernatural.

From the dust jacket

Homesick: My Own Story

By: Jean Fritz
Illustrated by: Margot Tomes

Honor

Reviewed by: Deanna Knoll
Also read and recommended by: Sherry Early

Jean Fritz transports us to China in her vivid descriptions of her childhood there prior to World War II.  While she constantly longs for her American home, China indelibly becomes part of her as well.  It's this juxtaposition of her love for two countries that makes this book compelling reading.  A bonus—if you listen to the audible version, you can listen to the author read it in her own voice, which truly makes it feel as if you're sitting in her living room and she's telling you the story herself.

Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush

By: Virginia Hamilton
Illustrated by: Leo & Diane Dillon

Honor
NOT REVIEWED

Fourteen-year-old Teresa, better known as Tree, is the sole caretaker of her retarded older brother, Dabney, while her mother works. Sometimes it seems to Tree that her mother just uses work as an excuse to get away from the problems of her fatherless family. When she meets a handsome young stranger who calls himself Brother Rush, Tree feels her life is about to be changed by him—but she could not have dreamed in what way.

For Brother Rush draws Tree into a fascinating exploration of her own family's recent past, uncovering tangled relationships, dark, and sometimes frightening guilts and secrets—and leads Tree ultimately to a deeper understanding of herself and her mother.

In this compelling novel by one of America's finest writers for young people, beauty of language, rich characterizations and soaring fantasy are skillfully combined to open the inner vision of both protagonist and reader and to shed light on the emotional roots of present behavior that are ordinarily hidden in the dark dreams of the past.

From the dust jacket