At the end of January, my friend, and recommender of fabulous books, Loren, went to the American Library Association mid-winter conference. I too was invited to trek down to Chicago and drool over the hundreds of 2015 upcoming releases in the exhibit hall, but for various boring reasons, mostly having to do with grading papers and high school basketball games, couldn’t make it. So I missed out, but Loren, with two other church and book club friends, made it down and back with hundreds of books between them despite a serious snowstorm.
A week later I was in her living room looking at the stacks of books that had not yet found homes on her shelves. Cookbooks, kids books, fantasy, literary fiction, and poetry (like Caroline Starr Rose’s Bluebirds coming out this month! Which, of course, I loved.) were all there in dizzying numbers. And there in the middle of them I saw it:
Penderwicks in Spring, by Jeanne Birdsall.
The feeling that you have when you see a book that you have been waiting three years to come out, in one of your very favorite series, sitting in your friend’s living room six weeks before it hits the shelves must be one of the very best feelings in the world. I let out a very undignified shriek, “Loren you have new Penderwicks!”
“You can borrow it,” she said a little amused at my euphoria.
It was like she said I could have a second Christmas.
I promptly grabbed the book and refused to let go of that cheery yellow and green cover for the rest of the night.
I read the first Penderwicks series three years ago on the first day of my new life as a nanny after leaving a PhD program. I first met the four sisters on their way to their summer cottage on a sunny summer day when I, at the end of January on a cold but equally sunny day, was riding the DC metro to care for one special little boy. The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, embodied the freedom and new direction my life was taking, centering around beautiful children and books written for them. Listening Susan Denaker read Jeanne Birdsall’s words that day as I walked through DC neighborhoods was a reminder of the power and beauty of writing for and about children. It is seemed like a confirmation in my soul that I was called to the same kind of work.
The Penderwick sisters: responsible and kind Rosalind, orderly and focused Skye, passionate and romantic Jane, and their butterfly wing-wearing, dog-devoted little sister Batty, are this amazing mix of old fashioned family (like the families in Little Women, Half Magic, Meet the Austins, or Swallows and Amazons) and completely modern girls who play soccer and have dreams of becoming astrophysicists and novelists.
One of the beautiful things about Jeanne Birdsall’s penultimate installment in the planned 5 book Penderwick series is that she is letting the sisters grow up and grow into these dreams. I love how they are these wonderful models of contemporary girlhood and femininity: multifaceted and dynamic with dreams and love for each other. I have been waiting eagerly for this fourth book to see how the family has grown.
The Penderwicks in Spring, due out March 15th, follows Batty, who is now 12. We mourn with Batty over the loss of her wonderful dog Hound and explore with her the discovery that she has a beautiful singing voice. I particularly loved the music teacher Mrs. Grunfeld and the scene in which Mrs. G discovers Batty’s voice. Don’t we all need someone to pick our voice out and exclaim that it’s beautiful? That is the way with these sweet books—you are invited into the family to love the sisters and experience their triumphs and talents like they were your own.
The Penderwicks is the book that I most often buy and recommend for the girls in my life. They are buoyant, and while you are wandering around the beautiful New England countryside with them on their romping adventures, you find at the end that they are working through real life tragedies and difficulties of dead and absent parents. I am not someone who cries frequently at the end of books, but by the end of The Penderwicks in Spring I was crying, reading the redemption and reconciliation between sisters.
Perhaps because I do not have my own sister, I treasure my friends, and cousins, and sister-in-laws, and the sister-characters in books so much. Or perhaps it is just because I have grown to love little, now growing up, Batty so much.
This past weekend was the one year anniversary of our move to Wisconsin. To celebrate, Evan and I had lunch at the wonderful Milwaukee coffee roaster and shop Colectivo and went to the amazing Boswell Book Company for the first time. We each picked out a book. Evan got Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. And I cheated a bit with the one book rule—I got 3 books, the first 3 Penderwick—since I have always bought them for others. It felt like a fitting way to commemorate the anniversary of moving, the slow work to creating a home for our own children someday and of making space to write good children’s books. Congratulations to Jeanne Birdsall on her beautiful fourth book of the series; it continues to inspire and fill me up with joy!
Have you read The Penderwicks? What are your favorite books to buy the girls in your life?
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