Cynthia Voigt (1942 - )

Genre: Children's Literature

Cynthia Voigt, a resident of Deer Isle since the early 1990s, was born in Boston on 25 Feb. 1942, raised in Connecticut, went to Dana Hall School, and is a 1963 Smith College graduate. She was a high school English teacher in Glen Burnie and Annapolis, Maryland, and continued teaching during the early years of her writing career. For more on Voigt, check the Scholastic Voigt biography. Some of the links below also offer a plethora of biographical information on Voigt.

Voigt's first book, Homecoming was published in 1981. The idea for the book came to her when she saw several children waiting by themselves in a car. Although she was working on a novel that would later be published as Building Blocks (1984), she put it aside and began writing Homecoming, the story of the abandoned Tillerman children. When it was published, she received immediate favorable recognition from reviewers and quickly became and remains one of the most popular writers of young adult books. The Tillermans are also the focus of Dicey's Song (1982), which won the 1983 Newbery Award, Sons From Afar (1987), and Seventeen Against the Dealer (1989). There's an online teaching guide for the whole Tillerman Cycle.

Minor characters in the Tillerman series are the central characters in A Solitary Blue (1993), a 1994 Newbery Honor Book, and Come a Stranger (1995).

Voigt addresses many of the issues and fears faced by today's adolescents. The concerns include:

1. Friendship/popularity: Bad Girls (1996), Bad, Badder, Baddest (1997), It's Not Easy Being Bad (2000), Bad Girls in Love (2002), Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? (2006).
2. Physical handicaps: Izzy, Willy-Nilly (1986)
3. Sexual abuse: When She Hollers (1994)
4. Loneliness/Isolation: The Runner (1985)
5. Drug Addiction: Orfe (1992)

In addition to her contemporary novels, Voigt has written several historical novels set in the middle ages. The Kingdom Series includes Jackaroo (1985), On Fortune's Wheel (1990), and The Wings of a Falcon (1993). Elske (1999) is also set in the time and location of the Kingdom.

Her versatile writing talent is also expressed in her mystery novels, The Vandemark Mummy (1991) and The Callender Papers (1983; 2000) which received the Edgar Award for the best juvenile mystery in the year it was published.

In 1995, Voigt received the Margaret Alexander Edwards Award. The award, named after a noted Young Adult Services librarian, is given in recognition of a writer's collective work rather than a single book. She was the 2004 recipient of the Maine Library Association Youth Services Section's Katahdin Award for lifetime achievement in children's literature.

Other Voigt titles are: Tell Me If The Lovers Are Losers (1982); Stories About Rosie (1986); Shore Writers' Sampler II: Stories And Poems (1988); Glass Mountain: A Novel (1991); David and Jonathan (1992); The Rosie Stories (2003; ill. Cat Bowman Smith), a chapter book written from the dog's point of view; Good Moring, Rosie (2003). Her novel with a Maine setting, Tree By Leaf, was published in 1988. A young children's book, Angus and Sadie (2005) is about two border collie puppies adopted by a Maine farm couple.

Although only one book, Presenting Cynthia, (1995) has been published about Voigt, there are numerous websites focusing on her books. The sites range from the thoughtful comments about Voigt's writing of an eighth grader from Cross River, New York, to the scholarly views on Voigt's Jackaroo of a Virginia Tech philosophy professor.


Last Update: 05/31/2007

(Return to List)