The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

Tara Falge

The Penderwicks

My Enrichment Reading blog

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall is a book with 262 pages full of excitement, and troublemakers! In the book there’s the 4 Penderwick sisters (Batty, Jane, Skye, and Rosalind), a boy who lives in Arundel named Jeffery Tifton, Jeffery’s stern mother Mrs. Tifton, and Mrs. Tifton’s boyfriend Mr. Dupree. When the Penderwicks take a vacation to Arundel and are caught in Mrs. Tifton’s award winning garden, Mrs. Tifton gets mad and tells Jeffery that the Penderwick sisters are a “bad influence” on him, Jeffery is to be sent to Pencey, a military academy, even though he would rather play piano. The main conflict in this story is Man V Man because Jeffery is being sent to Pencey and the girls will do anything to stop him.

In The Penderwicks Jeffery is being sent to a military academy, Pencey, against his will, and the Penderwick sisters are trying to help him. Mrs. Tifton thinks that Jeffery wants to go to the academy and when he tries to tell her the truth she wont listen. Instead of going to Pencey he wants to go to a boarding school in Boston and take private piano lessons. When Jeffery knocks on the Penderwick’s door and says he is running away to Boston they decide to help them. When Jeffery is caught he and his mother have a nice long talk and decide to let Jeffery go to Boston to fulfill his life’s dream. I recommend this book if you like stories about troublemakers and action!