Angieville

A couple of years ago, Atheneum Books  put out these new editions of Cynthia Voigt 's incomparable Tillerman Cycle and I swooned. I've never been over the moon for the past covers of these books, and my own set is a somewhat mismatched (but much beread and beloved) collection of mass market paperbacks. But this time —oh, this time they got it right. Something about these simple, slightly dreamy illustrations perfectly fits these stories of one family's struggle to survive and stay together. I require them. As I never tire of talking about this series, have you read them? Which is your favorite? I waffle (don't I always?) between Dicey's Song , A Solitary Blue , and Seventeen Against the Dealer . Yeah. Yeah.

I'm pretty sure my mom handed me a copy of Dicey's Song during one of our summer reading list deals. Surely you're familiar with the concept. I read so many of the books on the list and she, in turn, gave me some sort of reward. You see this was back in the pre-Chronicles of Narnia phase in my life. The early days when I would rather be rolling down hills or jumping on beds than reading during the summer. Frankly, it's hard for me to look back now and remember such a time even existed. I'm pretty sure it was a list from the local library and that most of the books on it were award winners of some sort. As Dicey's Song was the Newbery winner for 1983, it was definitely on the list. Looking back I'm actually glad I didn't pick it up that summer. Instead I held out long enough to have fallen in love with reading a year or two later as well as discover that it was actually the second book in a series of seven. The Tillerman Cycle follows the four Tillerman...