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Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks

Page history last edited by Lisa Gordis 16 years, 5 months ago

Bibliographical information:

Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy. New York: Knopf, 2005.

 

Brief summary:

The Penderwick family has rented a cottage for a few weeks. The four Penderwick sisters range in age from twelve-year-old Rosalind to four-year-old Batty. They live with their widowed father, who adores gardens and is prone to Latin quips. The novel describes their adventures at their cottage and the adjacent estate, and their friendships with Cagney, the teenager who cares for the gardens, and Jeffrey, the son of the cottage's owner.

 

Comments:

The Penderwick family is warm and entertaining. Their summer adventures include explorations of dreams and ambitions, in which the sisters support each other enthusiastically, in contrast to Jeffrey, whose snobbish mother wants him to be military rather than musical. Rosalind's adventures include her first serious crush, and Birdsall captures well a twelve-year-old's sense that she's older than she seems to the boy she admires, and her disappointment when she learns that he sees her as a child.

 

Grade/Age level:

Grades 5-7 (mostly because of Rosalind's romantic aspirations)

 

Cautions:

Some readers may be frustrated by the untranslated Latin. Curious readers may need help glossing the Latin phrases.

 

If you like this book, you might also like . . .

Little Women, with which it shares several plot elements: four sisters, an absent parent, a wealthy neighbor who loves music, a sister who writes.

--Lisa Gordis

 

 

 

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