The Penderwicks on Gardam Street

Review by New York Times Review

Jay and Ray are fed up with being identical twins, "tired of always seeing that question mark in the eyes of the kids at school." So when Ray stays home sick on the first day of sixth grade and only "Jay Grayson" gets called for attendance, the boys dream up a prank: every other day they trade places in class, as well as in homework assignments, crushes and sports tryouts; the other one hides out at home. The plan works brilliantly for a while, and Clements is good at making us believe the brothers would be desperate enough to try it. THE LONESOME PUPPY Written and illustrated by Yoshitomo Nara. Chronicle. $17.99. (Ages 3 and up) Stranger and far more eloquent than Clifford the big red dog, the puppy of this book's title is so huge he straddles the earth: "I was too big for anyone to notice me, and that is why I was always all alone and lonesome." Until one day a tiny, brave girl does notice - "The girl was very surprised. I was surprised, too" - and each makes a friend. The oddly flat, expressionless appearance of the girl is almost off-putting, but the big puppy is a creature to warm up to. THE PENDERWICKS ON GARDAM STREET By Jeanne Birdsall. Knopf. $15.99. (Ages 8 to 12) Birdsall's second novel, a sequel to her National Book Award-winning "Penderwicks," offers comforting comedy in an Austen- and Alcott-like vein. Four years after his wife has died, Mr. Penderwick opens a letter she had written (and entrusted to his sister), urging him to begin dating again. So his daughters spring into action, orchestrating the worst dates they can think of, convinced that he's not ready yet - and neither are they. Subplots converge in a predictable fashion, but the various romantic misadventures (not just Dad's) are appealing. OOPS! By Alan Katz. Illustrated by Edward Korea. Margaret K. McElderry/Simon & Schuster. $17.99. (Ages 4 to 8) Like a goofier Shel Silverstein, Katz finds inspiration for poems in unusual subjecter including penmanship ("my b's all look like d's"), eggs ("they don't have eyes, they don't have legs") bowling alleys and, of course, bathrooms. Keren's drawings give "Oops!" much of its scruffy charm, and a chatty coda shares Katz's own grade-school verse and some early working titles - as well as an idea for a possible sequel, "Uh-Oh." AS GOOD AS ANYBODY Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel's Amazing March Toward Freedom. By Richard Michelson. Illustrated by Raul Colon. Knopf. $16.99. (Ages 6 to 10) A portrait of one of the more unusual partnerships of the civil rights movement. The book begins with a young Martin, angry at the "whites only" signs all around him. The scene shifts to Warsaw, where Abraham's father tells him, "Walk like a prince, not a peasant." King and Heschel, a minister and a rabbi, grow up to join together in the 1965 march in Selma, Ala., and this book shows how it happened. A BALLOON FOR A BLUNDERBUSS By Alastair Reid. Illustrated by Bob Gill. Phaidon. $14.95. (Ages 4 to 8) A reissue of a 1961 book, "Balloon" is evocative of a more whimsical time in picture books. The handsome retro illustrations in pen and ink - no computers here - complement Reid's text, which suggests a series of outlandish swaps: a butterfly in the hand earns a wishbone, which in turn can be exchanged for a kite with a tail, then a straw hat, until eventually a tower is traded up for a small army (looking like proper tin soldiers) and even "11 towering icebergs." A comical and poetic flight of fancy, and it all makes a kind of sense. JULIE JUST

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The Penderwick sisters, who made a splash in their first eponymous novel (which won a  2005 National Book Award) return in another warm family story. An opening chapter, which might bring a tear to the eye, tells how the girls' mother died right after Batty's birth. Now, some four years later, Aunt Claire presents the girls' father with a letter from his late wife, telling him it's time to start dating. Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty beg to differ and come up with a harebrained scheme to thwart Mr. Penderwick. But the girls aren't just focused on their father. Rosalind has her own romantic entangelments; and Skye and Jane write compositions for each other, which leads to myriad problems. Meanwhile, little Batty has become enamored of the widow and her baby son who live next door. There's never much suspense about where all this is going, but things happen in such touching ways that the story is hard to resist. As in the previous book, Birdsall seems to get inspiration from books like Sydney Taylor's All-of-a-Kind Family and the movie Meet Me in St. Louis just the sort of cozy fare that's missing in today's mean-girl world.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2008 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This sequel to Birdsall's National Book Award winner, The Penderwicks, has even more charm than the original. The prologue hits the only maudlin note, flashing back to Mrs. Penderwick on her deathbed as she instructs her husband's sister, Claire, to make sure he finds love again after sufficient mourning. The Penderwick sisters--Rosalind, Jane, Skye and Batty--learn of this valediction four years later when Aunt Claire begins arranging blind dates. An emergency MOPS (Meeting of Penderwick Sisters) hatches the Save Daddy plan, in which the girls orchestrate dates so dreadful their father will see widowed life is best. Neighbors on Gardam Street include football-playing brothers Nick and Tommy (the latter plays Tracy to Rosalind's Hepburn), and two newcomers: a widowed professor and her toddler baby. Middle sisters Jane and Skye, who share a room but nothing else, steal the show by swapping homework assignments with hilariously catastrophic results. It's sheer pleasure to spend time with these exquisitely drawn characters, girls so real that readers will feel the wind through their hair as they power down the soccer field. Ages 8-12. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-7-Jeanne Birdsall's second book (Knopf, 2008) about the Penderwick family is even better than her first, the National Book Award-winning The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy (Knopf, 2005). The story begins as the four daughters return home to begin a normal school year.ÅMuch to their surprise, they find that their aunt has given their father a letter from their mother who died three years ago. In the letter, she begs him to continue on with his life, date, marry, and have a happy family life.ÅThe oldest daughter, Rosalind, hatches the "Save Daddy Plan" since she is determined never to have a replacement for her late mother.ÅOf course, plans have a way of going awry and father has a few plans of his own. In the meantime, the sisters have their own problems. What will happen to Rosalind's relationship with her neighbor Tommy?Å Sisters Skye and Jane have homework and school disasters, and youngest sister Batty goes on a secret spy mission.ÅSusan Denaker's narration creates a pace that's soothing but never boring. Listeners will relate to the well-drawn, charming characters. Birdsall plans at least three more installments to this series.-Linda Steele, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

Read by Susan Denaker. (Intermediate, Middle School)This recording is a terrific way to experience the further adventures of the Penderwick sisters. When the girls learn that Aunt Claire is playing matchmaker for their widower father, they secretly retaliate with the Save-Daddy Plan: a "fool-proof" scheme to keep Gardam Street free of stepmothers. Narrator Denaker gives an arresting performance that suitably captures Birdsall's infectious combination of warmth, tenderness, and madcap hijinks. Denaker's comic timing shines as she describes homework disasters, soccer mishaps, new neighbors, school dances, and romantic entanglements. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

This return to the Cameron, Mass., cul-de-sac home of the Penderwicks--romantic seventh-grader Rosalind, temperamental sixth-grader Skye, dramatic fifth-grader Jane, four-year-old Batty, and their widowed college-professor father, Martin, whom readers met in Birdsall's 2005 National Book Award-winning novel--begins with a visit from his sister, the girls' affable Aunt Claire. She has brought a pale blue envelope entrusted to her by their beloved mother years earlier; it contains a deathbed note in which Elizabeth Penderwick encourages her husband to date again. The girls, horrified, formulate a "Save Daddy Plan," but they are, of course, doomed to failure. While observant readers will deduce the denouement on page 13, Batty makes it perfectly plain a little further along: "I say Daddy should date the [sweet, young, widowed, also-an-academic] lady next door, and then I could play with her baby." Out of the mouths of babes . . . . The rest of the story is a pleasant ramble of a read, replete with well-intentioned scheming, adolescent crushes, horrible homework disasters, soccer, secrets, school dances and lots and lots of literary allusion (and yes, a wedding). (Fiction. 8-12) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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CHAPTER ONE: Rosalind Bakes a Cake Four years and four months later Rosalind was happy. Not the kind of passionate, thrilling happy that can quickly turn into disappointment, but the calm happy that comes when life is steadily going along just the way it should. Three weeks earlier she'd started seventh grade at the middle school, which was turning out not to be as overwhelming as rumored, mostly because she and her best friend, Anna, shared all the same classes. And it was late September, and the leaves were on the verge of bursting into wild colors--Rosalind adored autumn. And it was a Friday afternoon, and although school was all right, who doesn't like weekends better? On top of all that, Aunt Claire was coming to visit for the weekend. Beloved Aunt Claire, whose only flaw was that she lived two hours away from the Penderwicks' home in Cameron, Massachusetts. But she tried to make up for it by visiting often, and now she was arriving this evening. Rosalind had so many things to tell her, mostly about the family's summer vacation, three wonderful weeks at a place called Arundel in the Berkshires. There had been many adventures with a boy named Jeffrey, and for a while Rosalind had thought that she might be in love with another boy--an older one--named Cagney, but that had come to nothing. Now Rosalind was determined to stay away from love and its confusions for many years, but still she wanted to talk it all over with her aunt. There was lots to get done before Aunt Claire arrived--clean sheets on the bed, clean towels in the bathroom, and Rosalind wanted to bake a cake--but first she had to pick up her little sister Batty at Goldie's Day Care. She did so every day on the walk home from school, and even that was part of her happiness. For this was the first year her father had given her the responsibility for her sisters after school and until he came home. Before now, there had always been a babysitter, one or another of the beautiful Bosna sisters, who lived down the street from the Penderwicks. And though the Bosnas had been good babysitters as well as beautiful, Rosalind considered herself much too old now--twelve years and eight months--for a babysitter. The walk from Cameron Middle School to Goldie's took ten minutes, and Rosalind was on her last minute now. She could see on the corner ahead of her the gray clapboard house, with its wide porch full of toys. And now she could see--she picked up her pace--a small girl alone on the steps. She had dark curls and was wearing a red sweater, and Rosalind ran the last several yards, scolding as she went. "Batty, you're supposed to stay inside until I get here," she said. "You know that's the rule." Batty threw her arms around Rosalind. "It's okay, because Goldie's watching me through the window." Rosalind looked up, and it was true. Goldie was at the window, waving and smiling. "Even so, I want you to stay inside from now on." "All right. But--" Batty held up a finger swathed in Band-Aids. "I just was dying to show you this. I cut myself during crafts." Rosalind caught up the finger and kissed it. "Did it hurt terribly?" "Yes," said Batty proudly. "I bled all over the clay and the other kids screamed." "That sounds exciting." Rosalind helped Batty into her little blue backpack. "Now let's go home and get ready for Aunt Claire." Most days the two sisters would linger on their walk home from Goldie's--at the sassafras tree, with leaves shaped like mittens, and at the storm drain that flooded just the right amount when it rained, so you could splash through without getting water in your boots. Then there was the spotted dog who barked furiously but only wanted to be petted, and the cracks in the sidewalk that Batty had to jump over, and the brown house with flower gardens all around, and the telephone poles that sometimes had posters about missing cats and dogs. Batty always studied these carefully, wondering why people didn't take better care of their pets. But today, because of Aunt Claire's visit, they hurried along, stopping only for Batty to move to safety a worm that had unwisely strayed onto the sidewalk, and soon they were turning the corner onto Gardam Street, where they lived. It was a quiet street, with only five houses on each side, and a cul-de-sac at the end. The Penderwick sisters had always lived there, and they knew and loved every inch of it, from one end to the other. Even when Rosalind was in a hurry, like today, she noted with satisfaction the tall maples that marched along the street--one in every front yard--and the rambling houses that were not so young anymore, but still comfortable and well cared for. And there was always someone waving hello. Today it was Mr. Corkhill, mowing his lawn, and Mrs. Geiger, driving by with a car full of groceries--and then Rosalind stopped waving back, for Batty had broken into a run. "Come on, Rosalind!" cried Batty over her shoulder. "I hear him!" This, too, was part of their everyday routine. Hound, the Penderwicks' dog, always knew when Batty was almost home, and set up such a clamor he could be heard all up and down Gardam Street. So now both sisters were running, and in a moment, Rosalind was unlocking their front door, and Hound was throwing himself at Batty as though she'd been away for centuries instead of just the day. Rosalind dragged Hound back into the house, with Batty dancing alongside in an ecstasy of reunion. Down the hall they all went, through the living room and into the kitchen--where Rosalind opened the back door and shoved the joyful tangle of child and dog into the backyard. She shut the door behind them and leaned against it to catch her breath. Soon Batty would need her afternoon snack, but for now Rosalind had a moment to herself. She could start on the cake, which she'd decided should be a pineapple upside-down one. Humming happily, she took the family cookbook from its shelf. It had been a wedding gift to her parents, and was full of her mother's penciled notes. Rosalind knew all the notes by heart, and even had her favorites, like the one next to candied sweet potatoes--An insult to potatoes everywhere. There was no note next to pineapple upside-down cake. Maybe if it was a great success, Rosalind would add her own. She did that sometimes. Excerpted from The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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