Books by Cynthia Voigt
New
Young Fredle
January 2011 release
Fredle asks too many questions and, as if that doesn't get him in enough trouble, there is always his sweet tooth to do the job. Things are bound to go wrong for a mouse like Fredle – but sometimes the wrong things can turn out to be righter than the right things.
Series
The Kingdom books: Jackaroo; On Fortune's Wheel; The Wings of a Falcon; Elske
These are adventure stories that take place in a distant past at a time when reading is a privilege restricted to the wealthy and powerful, where justice is hard to come by, where danger – from without or within, from above or below or any side, from natural or human causes – threatens. The heroines and heroes of these stories have to fight to win what is important to them, and sometimes they have to give it up.
The Tillerman books: Homecoming; Dicey’s Song; A Solitary Blue; The Runner; Come a Stranger; Sons from Afar; Seventeen Against the Dealer
With both parents gone, the four Tillerman children – Sammy, Maybeth, James and Dicey, who at 13 is the oldest and the one responsible – have to find a place where they can live together and, once they have done that, they have to learn how to be there, how to live their own lives and grow up into their own selves. The Tillermans – all of them, including Gram and Momma and Bullet – are not people who have things easy, or make things easy on themselves. These books tell the various stories of this family, and of their friends, too.
The Bad Girls books: Bad Girls;Bad, Badder, Baddest; It’s Not Easy Being Bad; Bad Girls in Love; Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?
Mikey and Margalo meet in 5th grade, and from then on, through 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grades, they stay friends, doing the kinds of things friends do, fighting with or for each other, quarreling, hanging out, heading off in different directions and sharing food, experiences, troubles. Every year brings its own difficulties and its own opportunities – mostly, but not always, opportunities for social disaster. It is not easy for the two friends to run the world the way they want to, the way it should be run.
The Rosie books: Stories about Rosie; The Rosie Stories
These are the closest thing to autobiographical writing I have ever done, and they are the ... adventures? misadventures? ... of Rosie, the family dog, who never really became a sensible mature creature. Almost everything that happens in these stories, really happened; almost everything that is said, was really said. And Rosie was just as much fun as it looks like she is.
The Davis Farm books: Angus and Sadie; Young Fredle
The stories take place among the animals living on the Old Davis Farm, under the care of Mister and Missus. Angus and Sadie are border collie puppies adopted from a shelter, brother and sister, but very different from one another. Angus is quick and strong and bold while Sadie starts out with a broken leg, so she is slower, and also timid, and maybe even foolish. But she knows how to be glad. Young Fredle is only a mouse, but he has his ideas.
Non-Series
Building Blocks
Brann discovers that he has traveled back in time, and met his father when he is only Brann's age.
Izzy, Willy-Nilly
Izzy is a normal high school girl, normally pretty (with especially good legs), normally popular, normally smart, just a nice girl, until an accident changes her – and her future – in a way that can never be undone.
David and Jonathan
After World War II, a Holocaust survivor comes to live with the American Jewish family that has been searching for him. But nothing about David is what the family, especially the son, Jonathan, expected, or wished for.
When She Hollers
What if your life is a deadly trap? Can you escape? If so, how, and also, is there anybody there to help you? Who do you have to be, to be a person who can escape? Tish's life is a trap.
The Callender Papers
This is a Gothic novel, with secrets from the past that must be brought out into the open, if the young heroine wants to escape with her life.
Tree by Leaf
If you were given – somehow – the power to cure the ills of the world, or at least some of the ones you know about, the ones that distress you, could you really make things better? Or could you only make them different?
The Vandemark Mummy
When the mummified remains of a girl are bequeathed to the college, Phineas and his sister find themselves in the middle of a dangerous mystery.
Orfe
In the myth, Orpheus sang such wonderful, beautiful songs that the King and Queen of the Dead agreed to let him lead his beloved wife back up to the land of the living, as long as he did not look back to be sure she was following him, all the long journey. But he did look back, and he lost her again and forever. How could that happen? And if it were to happen in the recent past, what would the story be?
Tell Me if the Lovers are Losers
Three very different girls are assigned to be room-mates at college, and over their freshman year they learn to live together, and to be friends to one another, and to cause changes in one another.
Glass Mountain
A novel for adults, or maybe just romantics, as much like an old movie (I hope) as anything else, an old movie starring Cary Grant, for preference, about love among the rich, and those who aspire to be rich, and those who aspire to love.
Awards
Angus and Sadie, the Sequoyah Book Award (given by readers in Oklahoma), 2008
The Katahdin Award, for lifetime achievement, 2003
The Anne V. Zarrow Award, for lifetime achievement, 2003
The Margaret Edwards Award, for a body of work, 1995
Jackaroo, Rattenfanger-Literatur Preis (ratcatcher prize, awarded by the town of Hamlin - of course - in Germany), 1990
Izzy, Willy-Nilly, the Young Reader Award (California), 1990
The Runner, Deutscher Jungenliteraturpreis (German young people's literature prize), 1988
Zilverengriffel (Silver Pen, a Dutch prize), 1988
Come a Stranger, the Judy Lopez Medal (given by readers in California), 1987
A Solitary Blue, a Newbery Honor Book, 1984
The Callender Papers, The Edgar (given by the Mystery Writers of America), 1984
Dicey's Song the Newbery Medal, 1983