★★★☆☆ The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, by Jeanne Birdsall
Slice of life
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
Jeanne Birdsall
Slice of life
Jeanne Birdsall's series The Penderwicks is a series of classic children's books. I had not read them before, but became aware of them through The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. (Honestly, sometimes I think that my only reason to read books is to become aware of other books to read. Hello, infinite regress!)
The Penderwicks are a family of five: Mr Penderwick, a botanist and college professor (I think), with an annoying habit of unnecessarily making important observations in Latin, and his five daughters Batty (four years old), Jane (ten), Skye (eleven), and Rosalind (twelve). Their mother died two weeks after Batty's birth, and the grief is still fresh for the three older sisters. Aside from that, however, they are a happy family. They have a custom of vacationing on Cape Cod, but the cottage Mr Penderwick rented this summer was sold just before they were ready to depart. Hearing of another cottage for rent, he snaps it up sight unseen. Good plausible basis for an adventure!
It transpires that the cottage (quite large, in my estimation for a cottage) is an unoccupied caretaker's home attached to the mansion Arundel owned by wealthy Mrs Tifton, who you learn almost immediately is the villain of the piece. Mrs Tifton has an eleven-year-old son Jeffrey, who makes friends with the sisters.
Adventures ensue. The sisters get into trouble and get Jeffrey into trouble. Mrs Tifton sours on them, and unfortunate words are exchanged. The story is a little clunky -- the kids get themselves into more dangerous trouble than really seems plausible, and Mrs Tifton is more a caricature than a believable person. The final resolution is too neat.
Now, I know this is intended for middle grade kids, and you may think middle graders are not critical readers. I beg to differ. I remember how I felt about the books I read when I was ten, and I was not easily impressed. I could recognize a contrived plot as well then as now (perhaps better).
This was a solid three-star read. I'm glad to have read it. But there are so many really good books out there still waiting to be read, that I will not intentionally choose to read more books like this. Thus, the series ends here for me.