Book Review: The Penderwicks: a Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

By Matt Berman

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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that the behavior of the girls is a little out of control. They repeatedly rampage through Mrs. Tifton's formal gardens, despite her making it clear that they are not welcome there, sneak out of the house, lose their tempers, are not always truthful.

Families who read this book could discuss the behavior of all concerned. Does Mrs. Tifton have any right on her side? Is she correct in her criticism of Mr. Penderwick's parenting? What do you think of Jeffrey's solution? Also, as the book depicts a type of childhood that may be more familiar to parents than kids, this may open the gates to comparisons between today's and yesterday's childhood.

Common Sense Media Review
Children's book awards are often a strange and inscrutable lot, but the National Book Award for Young People's Literature is surely the weirdest. Their choices in the past have been, ahem, well, let's just be polite and say eccentric. At least with this year's pick, The Penderwicks, you can see why it was chosen: it's a book calculated to warm the hearts of aging Boomers, and remind them of the books they read when they were kids. Whether it will warm the hearts of many of today's children remains to be seen. It will be loved by the kind of kids, if there are any left, who go into a trance over Little Women, The Moffats, and others listed below in the Related Books section.

It's a perfectly pleasant story, reasonably enjoyable in a very slow-moving, old-fashioned sort of way, about children, who have apparently never heard of modern media, enjoying a summer of outdoor play. But winning a major award makes its faults stand out: stereotyped characters, especially the villainously snobbish Mrs. Tifton and her smarmy beau, Dexter Dupree, and the girls' absent-minded, Latin-spouting professor father; emotional flatness, despite the buckets of tears cried by the characters; and an ending in which the best-case scenario is for Jeffrey to go off to boarding school at the ripe old age of 11 so that his mom can marry the odious Dupree without being encumbered by an inconvenient child. Not quite the old-fashioned values you'd expect from an old-fashioned book, but a modestly enjoyable read nonetheless.

From the Book:
"Lost and weary, the brave explorers and their faithful beast argued among themselves. Only Sabrina Starr remained calm," said Jane. Sabrina Starr was the heroine of books that Jane wrote. She rescued things. In the first book, it was a cricket. Then came Sabrina Starr Rescues a Baby Sparrow, Sabrina Starr Rescues a Turtle, and, most recently, Sabrina Starr Rescues a Groundhog. Rosalind knew that Jane was looking for ideas on what Sabrina should rescue next. Skye had suggested a man-eating crocodile, who would devour the heroine and put an end to the series, but the rest of the family had shouted her down. They enjoyed Jane's books.