The Penderwicks in Spring opens with a girl stamping on the last patch of snow in her garden, and it is not really a book about spring at all.<\/p>\n
Batty is in fifth grade. Her brother Ben is digging for buried gold and finding door hinges. Two-year-old Lydia is supposed to be napping and is instead standing on a pile of toys at the window, roaring Ben’s name like a foghorn. There are eight Penderwicks now, which Batty points out is a lot, especially when the eighth one is Lydia.<\/p>\n
Then Batty pokes a stick into the melting snow and finds a rubber bone.<\/p>\n
Hound died six months ago. Batty was a baby when he decided to look after her and he never stopped. She keeps what is left of him in a canvas bag at the back of her wardrobe, a collar, a half-chewed tennis ball, a tuft of black hair. She adds the bone, curls up and lets herself cry where nobody can see.<\/p>\n
She also believes it was her fault. Nobody in her family has ever said that. She has decided it anyway.<\/p>\n
That is the engine of the whole book, and it is why I would not hand this one to a child who has just lost a pet without reading it first. It is not gloomy, though. The colours drain out of Batty’s world for a page and then Lydia falls off her toys, or Jane reverses the family car until something under it goes THUNK, or Asimov the cat allows himself to be comforted for exactly as long as it suits him.<\/p>\n
Your reader will need a little patience at the start. This one sits a good way into the series and it assumes you already know who everybody is, which the book fills in as it goes but not all at once.<\/p>\n
The rest is very good indeed on the small stuff. Money being tight and the children noticing. A father who says things in Latin when he thinks nobody is listening. A sister who pulls her own hair in thirteen directions while doing maths.<\/p>\n
A big noisy family where the grief and the daftness sit right next to each other is hard to get right, and this is one of the best at it.<\/p>\n
Start them on The Penderwicks on Gardam Street instead if they want the sisters from earlier, when there were only four of them and their aunt had just decided it was time their father started dating again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Penderwicks in Spring opens with a girl stamping on the last patch of snow in her garden, and it is not really a book about spring at all. Batty is in fifth grade. Her brother Ben is digging for buried gold and finding door hinges. Two-year-old Lydia is supposed to be napping and is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11271,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9323,"lr_next_read_anchor":"The Penderwicks on Gardam Street","lr_seo_hook":"A girl still grieving the family dog, six months on, in a house of eight."},"book_tag":[23],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[444],"class_list":["post-9322","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-funny-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-jeanne-birdsall"],"yoast_title":"The Penderwicks in Spring by Jeanne Birdsall | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A girl still grieving the family dog, six months on, in a house of eight. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n