The Penderwicks

llpanda - If your thinking of reading this book and judge it by its cover don't. This is an awesome book! Rosalind,Skye, Jane, and Elizabeth aka Batty ,are four sisters that are very different! Since their mom died from cancer after Batty was born Rosalind the oldest is the "mother" of the family. Skye the second child is really energetic and sometimes her " big mouth" gets her in trouble. Jane the third oldest ( as you can tell from my pattern) is really romantic and loves to write stories about Sabrina Starr a character she made up.And Batty the littlest always wears wings and her best friend is their dog Hound. The story starts out that the Penderwicks' summer cottage is sold and they need one for the summer( cause summer isn't summer without a summer cottage to stay in). They find one on the property of a mansion. The rest of the story tells how they spend their summer and as you can tell from the cover with two rabbits and a a couple of interesting boys. When my mom recommended this book I said no because I judged it by the cover but when I saw it on here I decided to read and review it just to get a book prize but I actually picked the Penderwicks for my prize after I read it . I can't stop telling you how much I love love love this book!

Starred review from July 25, 2005
This timeless tale from a first-time author introduces the thoroughly likable Penderwicks, on vacation in a rental cottage on Arundel, a sprawling Massachusetts estate. Their spirited family dynamics and repartee call to mind those in Hilary McKay's novels, and the sisters' delightfully diverse personalities propel the plot. For instance, when they pull up to the estate's mansion, 10-year-old Jane feels certain she has spied a "lonely boy" in a window and promptly begins a novel about him once they reach their cottage. Skye, 11, elated to have her own room with two beds (she plans to use both), immediately "wrote the bed schedule next to her favorite word problem about trains traveling in different directions." Batty, a shy four-year-old, faithfully wears her butterfly wings and is devoted to her dog, Hound (who "insisted on licking faces in the middle of the night"). The girls' loving, amusingly distracted father is a botany professor with a fondness for spouting Latin phrases. Rosalind, the oldest at 12, has looked after the others since their mother's death (shortly after Batty's birth), and when she meets gentle Cagney, the estate's teenage gardener, he captures her heart. The "lonely boy" turns out to be sensitive, sincere Jeffrey, a talented musician. Tension arises when Jeffrey's pretentious mother and her fiancé decide to send the boy to military school. Certain to be as sorry as the sisters are when it's time to leave Arundel, readers will hope for a return visit from this memorable cast. Ages 8-12.