Homecoming

This should have been up last night, oops! Homecoming by Cynthia Voight is the story of the four Tillerman children, Maybeth, the pretty, quiet, almost other-worldly youngest, Sammy, solid and stubborn, James, smart but with a chip on his shoulder, and Dicey, the oldest, who is charged with looking out for her siblings when their mentally ill mother abandons them in a mall parking lot. Somehow she keeps them safe and together as they travel by themselves with few resources to their great aunt's house and then their grandmother's. The sequel, Dicey's Song, about Dicey's adjustment to her new, more stable life, won the Newberry, and there are several other books about the Tillerman's and their friends.