Yes, there is a new Penderwicks book!
It seems I did not gloat loudly enough on that happy day last week when we received a copy of the new Penderwicks book, because when I shared a link to a radio interview with Jeanne Birdsall on Facebook today, there was a flurry of “I didn’t know!” replies.
So. In case you hadn’t heard: The Penderwicks at Point Mouette is out. I hear it’s wonderful. I haven’t read it yet, myself, because my wretched daughters snatched it out of the jiffy-mailer the moment it arrived, and there are so very many of them, these daughters of mine, that the Penderwick girls may well be off to college before I get my hands on this third installment of their adventures.
It’s funny…one of the best parts of motherhood, for me, has been getting to share my most beloved literary friends with my children. Laura and Mary, Betsy and Tacy, Anne Shirley, the Austins…you know my list. But the Penderwicks hold a particularly dear place in our hearts, because they are characters we met together, Jane, Rose, Beanie, and me, all at once, the very first time. When I wrote about beginning The Penderwicks as a read-aloud way back in December, 2005, I called the post “Seven Belly Laughs“—and that was describing my girls’ reaction to chapter one alone. “How exciting to know our friendship is only just beginning,” I wrote. How delightful to know they’ve returned for another visit!
Also by Jeanne Birdsall:
(A recent Rillabook, as you’ll recall.)
to the girls. They—we, I should say—connected to the characters so instantly, from the very first page, that it’s hard to believe we only just met them. Jane seemed to find the connection so emotionally charged that she spent half the chapter with a blanket over her head, needing a refuge, I presume, in which to absorb the shock of having encountered a girl so apparently like her own self in the pages of this book. (The ten-year-old sister is named—guess what—Jane, and, like my ten-year-old Jane, is a dreamy sort of girl who likes to write stories.) Rose grinned wickedly over the barbed remarks of wisecracking Skye, and Beanie could not be restrained from leaping to her feet and echoing every line uttered by four-year-old Batty—who, like our Bean, prefers to spend her time wearing a pair of silken butterfly wings.