Books like Homecoming
After Dicey’s hard-won arrival, the craving is for more clear-eyed stories about capable children, complicated mothers, fierce sibling loyalty, and homes that must be built rather than simply found.
If you liked Homecoming, you’ll love these
Not lookalikes — kindred books. Each one shares something essential with Homecoming, and we tell you exactly what.
The immediate sequel asks the question Homecoming deliberately leaves open: what happens when survival is no longer a matter of miles and meals? At Abigail Tillerman’s farm, Dicey must attend school, accept help, and loosen her grip on the siblings she has kept alive.
Voigt makes ordinary life as demanding as the journey. Dicey’s competence remains admirable, but it also becomes armor; belonging requires a vulnerability she distrusts. The Newbery Medal recognized a sequel that deepens rather than repeats its predecessor. Homecoming gets the children to a possible home; Dicey’s Song reveals why learning to live there may be the greater adventure.
Dolphin adores her dazzling, tattoo-covered mother, Marigold; her older sister, Star, sees more clearly how precarious their life has become. Jacqueline Wilson captures exactly the painful doubleness Voigt understands: a parent can be loving and dangerously unreliable, while children become experts at managing what adults fail to manage.
The voice is lively, funny, and immediate, preventing the family’s troubles from becoming misery staged for effect. Winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the novel is especially piercing about siblings who cope differently—one through devotion, the other through practicality. Readers moved by Dicey’s premature responsibility will recognize these girls instantly, yet Wilson gives their predicament an unforgettable emotional color of its own.
Gilly arrives at yet another foster home armed with intelligence, contempt, and a plan not to need anyone. Where Dicey protects herself through competence, Gilly turns wit into a weapon; Katherine Paterson makes that abrasiveness exhilarating before exposing the loneliness beneath it.
This National Book Award winner refuses the comforting idea that the right household instantly repairs an abandoned child. Affection is awkward, pride has consequences, and adults are neither rescuers nor villains. Paterson’s brisk humor keeps the novel unsentimental, while Gilly’s hunger for her absent mother gives it a quiet ache. Few children’s novels are so honest about how fiercely a child may resist the very belonging she wants.