This book won a Newbery Honor award in 1984, and is identified as “Book 3 of 7 in the Tillerman Family Cycle Series.” In the first book of the cycle, Homecoming (1981), the four Tillerman children search for a new home after they are abandoned by their emotionally ill mother, eventually settling in with their grandmother (“Gram”) on a stark homestead in Crisfield, MD, on the Chesapeake Bay. for her free spirit and seeming warmth But how has her absence all those year affected him? What is his reaction to the way that she treats him now? And can he really trust her? At first, Jeff finds that he likes Melody. Melville, whom everyone identifies as Gambo, on the old Boudrault estate, along with a couple of elderly cousins known as “the aunts,” and a housekeeper Mrs. Then when Jeff is twelve years old, he receives an invitation to spend the summer with his mother who now lives with her own grandmother Mrs.

Back when he was seven and a half, in second grade, his environmentalist mother Melody up and left the family one day, returning permanently to her hometown of Charleston, SC. Jefferson (Jeff, though his mother calls him Jeffie) Greene lives in Baltimore, MD, with his rather reserved, undemonstrative father Horace, a university history professor to whom everyone, except Horace’s friend and fellow teacher Brother Thomas, refers simply as “The Professor.” Jeff goes to the University School, run by the university where his father teaches, and is an average student.

A Solitary Blue (published in 1983 by Atheneum Publishers, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company, 866 Third Ave., New York City, NY 10022 republished in 1993 by Scholastic Inc., 730 Broadway, New York City, NY 10008). No other compensation has been received for the reviews posted on Home School Book Review.įor more information e-mail Cynthia. Any books donated to Home School Book Review for review purposes are in turn donated to a library. (5 stars=EXCELLENT 4 stars=GOOD 3 stars=FAIR 2 stars=POOR 1 star=VERY POOR no stars=NOT RECOMMENDED)ĭisclosure: Many publishers, literary agents, and/or authors provide free copies of their books in exchange for an honest review without requiring a positive opinion. Recommended reading level: Said to be for ages 12 and up, but I would say 16 and up (1=nothing objectionable 2=common euphemisms and/or childish slang terms 3=some cursing and/or profanity 4=a lot of cursing and/or profanity 5=obscenity and/or vulgarity) Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, reprinted 2012

A solitary blue by cynthia voigt