It has been 10 years since the The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2005. With the publication of a fourth book, The Penderwicks in Spring, now would be the perfect time to start the series if you haven’t read it before.
In their breakout book, the four Penderwick sisters paved their way as this generation’s “The Saturdays” (by Elizabeth Enright) or Moffat family (by Eleanor Estes), but with a spunk that is all their own. When the Penderwicks’ story begins, Rosalind is 12, Skye is 11, Jane is 10, and Batty, the youngest, is 4.
This first book allows the reader to tumble into a wonderful world. Two subsequent books, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street and The Penderwicks at Point Mouette feature more of the Penderwick sisters, their best friend Jeffrey, and their adventures as a family.
In The Penderwicks in Spring, the sisters have grown up—Rosalind is in college and Skye and Jane are teenagers. Batty, now eleven, runs a dog-walking business where an overweight daschund named Duchess and a sharpei named Cilantro are her first clients. Ben is a second-grader who is fiercely adored by the newest addition to the Penderwick family, two-year-old Lydia. She will be instrumental in the fifth and final book in the series.
This fourth book has the same hilarity and laughter as the others, but as the sisters grow up, the story gains more gravitas. It is Jeffrey, honorary Penderwick and music mentore, who says to Batty, “Listen to me, Batty. Dogs die. People die. We do the best they can while they’re alive, and then they die anyway.”
And after death, there is always the quiet crescendo of a new spring blooming. The Penderwicks in Spring is Batty’s story to tell, and it is her voice the reader has been listening for all along.
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