The Penderwicks

About the Author: Jeanne Birdsall is an American children's book author who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, not far from the real Berkshire Mountains featured in this story. The Penderwicks was her very first novel, and it won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2005. She decided to become a writer when she was forty-one years old and got her inspiration from her love of classic family stories, gardens, and animals.

Characters

Rosalind: Rosalind is twelve years old, the oldest of the Penderwick sisters, and the most responsible. She has brown eyes and curly dark hair. She cares for her sisters and is the tallest of them. Her family likes her because she can handle any situation well, and often has to. She is often considered the prettiest of her sisters.

Skye: Skye is the second oldest sister in the family, eleven years old. She is learning algebra even though she is only in fifth grade. She has straight blonde hair and blue eyes. "Blue Skye, blue eyes" is how people remember which sister she is. She is neat and organized and loves the colour white. She is always ready to protect her family.

Jane: Jane is ten years old with the same dark curly hair and brown eyes as Rosalind. She has a vivid imagination. She has written a book series about a heroine named Sabrina Starr. So far she has written Sabrina Starr Rescues a Cricket, Sabrina Starr Rescues a Baby Sparrow, Sabrina Starr Rescues a Turtle, Sabrina Starr Rescues a Groundhog, and Sabrina Starr Rescues a Boy. She is also untidy, and keeps many notebooks with her to get ideas for her next story.

Elizabeth: Elizabeth was named after her mother and likes to be called Batty. She is four years old, has the same hair and eyes as Rosalind and Jane, and is very curious. She is the smallest in her family, and loves to hear stories about her family's past. Batty also sometimes likes exploring, with the family dog, Hound. She wears black and orange butterfly wings that she used once for Halloween, all the time.

Setting

The story is set in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts, on a beautiful estate called Arundel. The address of the location is 11 Stafford Street. The four Penderwick sisters, Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty, along with their father, rent a small, snug cottage surrounded by lots of greenery, such as trees, bushes, urns, and flowers. It used to be the guest cottage for the main house on the estate, a mansion called Arundel Hall. But now it is a visitor's cottage and the current owner, Mrs. Tifton, is in charge of it.

The time period of the story isn't mentioned in the book, but it is from the late twentieth century because it mentions telephones and that is the time period when the author wrote the book.

Short Summary of the Story

In the beginning of the story, four sisters, Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty, are going on a three-week summer vacation in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts, on a beautiful estate called Arundel, where they rent a cottage. Soon, they make friends with the lonely boy named Jeffrey Tifton living in the nearby mansion (home of Arundel's owner, called Arundel Hall), as they do with the housekeeper, Mrs. Churchill (known as Churchie), and the gardener, Cagney.

In the middle of the story, the four sisters learn that Jeffrey's snooty mother, Brenda Tifton, wants to marry a wretched, cunning man called Dexter Dupree who wants to send Jeffrey to a military school called Pencey. Mrs. Tifton also dislikes the Penderwicks (they are always running around her gardens, and bumping into her occasionally. Besides, Jane, Skye, and Jeffrey like to practice soccer or archery, and they end up hitting rose bushes or falling in flower beds. And there's a Garden Club competition coming up.) and warns them to stay out of trouble. Will they?

Towards the end of the story, the four sisters learn that Jeffrey is going to Pencey in three weeks. Soon, he decides to run away to Boston, so his mother and Mr. Dupree cannot send him to the school. Jeffrey knows that in Boston he can become a musician, which is what he wants to be. His cousins live there, and he can stay with them. Eventually, his mother figures out what is happening and he manages to convince her to send him to a musician's boarding school. In the end it's time for all of them to leave Arundel, and that makes Jeffery sad, but the Penderwicks promise that they can come to visit soon.

Thoughts on the Book

I chose this book because my family recommended it, and also because I read a short summary on the back page. This book is very similar to another book I read, Little Women, because it has four sisters, and all as different as pickles and whipped cream, yet so close together. They all love to have adventures, and that's good, because there are going to be plenty of them coming up! "Four sisters, endless adventures," someone once said.

This book is an adventurous realistic fiction book.

I liked this book because it was full of exciting occasions. For example, Skye once accidentally broiled some chocolate-chip cookies that Rosalind wanted her to give to Jeffrey, and burnt them. Then, once they had to wear some of Mrs. Tifton's old dresses and shoes to Jeffrey's birthday party (which isn't so amazing after all). What a fun story!

The one thing I did not like about this book was that Jeffrey wanted to run away because he hated the soldiers' school and didn't want to go there. He also wanted to run away because he hated Dexter, and he knew his mother wanted to marry that man. He couldn't tell that to his mother because he knew that she would not listen to him.

I would recommend this book to everyone, especially adventure lovers because the book is funny, creative and exciting. For example, readers will laugh at the sisters' clubs which are MOPS (Meeting Of Penderwick Sisters) and MOOPS (Meeting Of Older Penderwick Sisters). It also has exciting moments which will keep the reader turning pages like when Skye tells off Mrs. Tifton to defend Jeffrey and when Jeffrey stands up for his dream to play the piano.