Dicey's Beautiful and Brilliant Song

Over the past few weeks, the books that we have focused on all have one particular likeness. They all focus on children and their individual and unique characteristics.

In Dicey's Song, Cynthia Voight is able to capture the unique qualities in a family of four children. While the story about the Tillerman children is unique itself, Voight is able to follow the lives of the children and share their differences and the challenges and triumphs that they face along the way. While the main character is Dicey, the oldest sister, and she has her own unique qualities, I would like to focus on a less likely character, her little sister.

Maybeth, the youngest sister in the Tillerman family, is introduced as a sweet and quiet child but not long into the story, the reader discovers that she is slow in school and that her teacher and the children in her classroom lack belief that she will ever fully understand how to read.

One part in the novel focuses on a time when Maybeth is made to read in front of her class. She gets nervous and stumbles over her words and loses track, she is not able to make out the words on the page. The children in her class start to laugh at her. It seems that it is one of the first realizations that Maybeth has that she is not like the other children.

While Voight is blunt with the weaknesses of Maybeth, she also takes great strides in developing Maybeth's ability to play the piano. She introduces Maybeth's piano teacher that eventually becomes like family to the Tillermans because of his passion to give Maybeth all of the education in music that she needs.

Voight shows children that even though they might be different or bad at something, they are sure to be good at something else. She is celebrating individuality.