Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

2005 National Book Award Winner

Ratings Explanation

Violence:  A mean man hits a dog, who yelps in pain and retreats to its owner.

Sexual Content:  12-year-old Rosalind has a crush on 17-year-old Cagney, the gardener boy. She spies him kissing another girl and wishes it were her he were kissing, wondering what it might feel like. Children eavesdrop on a boy’s mother, who kisses her boyfriend and talks about marrying him.

Adult Themes:  Jeffrey’s mother is portrayed as an unkind, impatient, demanding woman who yells at her son and his friends a lot. She threatens to send Jeffrey to military school, where he’ll learn real discipline and proper behavior. Whether this borders on actual verbal abuse is probably up to the reader (if you’re a child, then yes; if you’re a parent, then perhaps not.) There is no physical abuse whatsoever.

Synopsis

The four Penderwick girls, their widowed father (a kindly botany professor), and their dog rent a cottage in the Massachusetts countryside for three weeks one summer, where they encounter all the delightful adventures one could possibly hope for in such a short span of time.  The cottage is actually a guest house on an enormous estate called Arundel, owned by the fabulously wealthy and equally snobbish Mrs. Tifton, whose own sweet 11-year-old son Jeffrey is in need of new and adventurous friends. He finds them, of course, in the Penderwicks–much to his mother’s chagrin, who considers the girls a very bad influence. Rosalind, who is 12, experiences the pangs of her first unrequited love when she meets the gardener boy, Cagney–seventeen, handsome, charming, and naturally inclined to see Rosalind as just a little girl. Then there is Skye, who is 11 and feisty, and hasn’t yet learned that speaking one’s mind (especially in front of Mrs. Tifton) can sometimes cause trouble. Ten-year-old Jane is an aspiring author with several unpublished books under her belt already, but just may find fodder for her new novel here at Arundel. Then there is four-year-old Batty, in butterfly wings and ever accompanied by faithful Hound, their pet dog. Together these four girls with Jeffrey in tow will escape a charging bull, ruin Mrs. Tifton’s garden party, discover a trove in Jeffrey’s attic, save runaway bunnies, and find the courage to face off to the tyrannical Mrs. Tifton herself. What more could one hope for in three short weeks?

The subtitle to this endearing novel is: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy. And really, that is all the formula one needs for summer adventure. This book follows in the tradition of the classic children’s novel about families (think Alcott’s March sisters, or Nesbit’s Bastables), where siblings stick together through all sorts of mishaps or disagreements and come out better in the end. It requires no wizardry to make children fall in love with this kind of simple formula, but the result is indeed magical. My 9-year-old daughter devoured this book, as did everyone in her little girls’ book club, and all agreed that a summer at Arundel Cottage would be ideal (in spite of having to deal with the dreadful Mrs. Tifton and her obnoxious boyfriend, Dexter). Now they are all eager to read the sequel, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street. Highly recommended.