Come a Stranger [Hardcover]

Cynthia Voigt (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Atheneum (1988)
• ASIN: B0022W8Y48
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 5.8 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Cynthia Voigt won the Newbery Medal for Dicey's Song and the Newbery Honor Award for A Solitary Blue, both part of the beloved Tillerman Cycle. She is also the author of many other celebrated books for middle-grade and teen readers, including Izzy, Willy-Nilly and Jackaroo. She was awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1995 for her work in literature, and the Katahdin Award in 2004. She lives in Maine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Voigt is probably one of the finest young adult writers..., June 29, 2000

By 

Malice - See all my reviews

This review is from: Come a Stranger (The Tillerman Series #5) (Mass Market Paperback)

Wilhemina Smiths (Mina), wants to dance. She's got liveliness, intelligence, zest for life, and determination; but she is also black. Voigt produces her usual not-out of the ordinary kaleidoscope of REAL people...and this is precisely what makes this book out of the ordinary. She presents Mina's emotions beautifully and level-headedly: her love of ballet, her keenness, her crush on/fascination with Tamer Shipp, her relationship with Dicey. The concluding sentences of the book are wonderfully ambiguous (at least a little). There's disappointment, triumph... It's just great.

Characters and scenes from the other books in the Tillerman Cycle overlap and are introduced through her own perspective. I'd recommend this book far more than "The Glory Field", and feel that it lived up to its potential and even surpassed my expectations.

Read it!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Come a Stranger, November 26, 2000

By 

Grace (North Bend, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Come a Stranger (The Tillerman Series #5) (Mass Market Paperback)

Mina Smith loves dancing, and when she gets accepted to the summer ballet school she thinks all of her dreams have come true. When she arrives at the school, she is the only black girl there. The other girls treat her differently, but Mina is too blind to notice. The next summer, she loses her coordination, gets sent home, and falls in love with the summer minister. In this book, Mina embarks on a journey to find herself, and comes to love dance even more than before.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Voight, no Stranger to good writing, August 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Come a Stranger (The Tillerman Series #5) (Mass Market Paperback)

What an amazing novel! Cynthia Voight proved her talent as an author with HOMECOMING, DICEY'S SONG, and ON FORTUNE'S WHEEL, but she proves herself to have amazing talent at understanding people. This book is told from the point of a black woman born and raised in Maryland. Though Voight is a white woman, her power of empathy, creates a realistic telling of the story in a way that crosses all race barriers. Voight reaches into her character Mina and retreives what counts; not color, not hardships, but soul. In expounding on the soul of her character, she deftly weaves through the events and people that have shaped Mina's life. She creates a wonderful compliment to the novel DICEY'S SONG and a excellent addition to the Tillerman saga. This novel reminds me vauguely of a phone conversation between Dicey and Mina in which we finally here Mina's end of the story. Details that Dicey overlooks, Mina fills in and vice versa. I would recommend this if you've enjoyed other novels in the Tllerman saga, and also as a jumping off point into the series. Please read it... I know you'll enjoy it.