The parental Penderwicks are going to England on a honeymoon for two weeks while Rosalind goes to New Jersey during that time with a friend. You see, with the recent marriage of their father to that perfectly nice Iantha, the family suddenly finds itself going in three different directions. Maybe torn apart is a bit of an exaggeration. “The Penderwick family was being torn apart.” Nuff said. It just happens to be done better by this author than any other you might name. Everything you expect out of a Penderwick novel is here. The Penderwicks at Point Mouette takes readers slightly out of their comfort range but not so far that they feel adrift. Nothing quite compares to the original and that stands true with this, the third Penderwick chapter. It’s no good to say a book is “the next Penderwicks” or “Penderwicks meets ”.

Now librarians must wade through the lot of them in the desperate hope that maybe one or two will be worth recommending. Imitators weren’t immediate, but as time has gone by they’ve cropped up like so many unwanted dandelions. Birdsall followed in her predecessors’ footsteps and did something unforgiveable: she made it look easy. Books that are touching a meaningful but never saccharine. Well, the creation of The Penderwicks was a good deed to children across the world in need of great fiction that’s homey and familiar without being cloying. A crime shared, I might add, by books written by authors like Dr. When Jeanne Birdsall’s first middle grade novel The Penderwicks was published in 2005 it committed a crime.

The penderwicks book 2