By Jeanne Birdsall
Four sisters and their dad rent a cottage on a grand estate for the summer, where they take up with a lonely boy and run afoul of his cold mother.
The four Penderwick sisters and their widowed father rent a cottage on the grounds of a grand estate called Arundel for the summer. There's Rosalind, the oldest, who mothers everyone; Skye, who's quick to argue; Jane, who's always writing a story in her head; and little Batty, who won't go anywhere without her butterfly wings. At Arundel they meet Jeffrey, the shy boy who lives in the big house, and the whole gang tumbles from one adventure to the next — a runaway rabbit, a close call with a bull, a secret they swear to keep. The trouble is Jeffrey's mother, who barely notices him and means to pack him off to a military school he dreads.
Birdsall wrote this to feel like the old summer classics, and it does — unhurried, roomy, warm. If your child wants a real story with a beginning, a middle, and an end but nothing frightening, this is a safe place to sink in. The worries here stay small and human: a lonely boy, an unkind mother, sisters who squabble and make up. Some children finish it and want to start it over so the summer doesn't have to end.