Autumn Adventures: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall

It is late September, and the Penderwick girls, Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and little Batty, are back in school. Still reminiscing about their wonderful summer visit to the Berkshires, they are already deeply immersed in their new school year. With seventh-grader Rosalind officially in charge after school, there are no more babysitters for the Penderwicks, and major decisions are still made in their customary MOPS (Meeting of Penderwick Sisters) or by the OAP (Oldest Available Penderwick).

Then a weekend visit from their dad's sister Claire rocks their comfortable life. Aunt Claire comes to give their father a blue envelope, inside of which is a letter entrusted to her by their mother, who died of cancer just after Batty's birth. In her letter she urges their father to begin to look for a new wife when the children are old enough to cope with the change. Claire has even arranged the first blind date with a friend of a friend. Mr. Penderwick is taken aback by the idea of dating after so many years, and the sisters are even more appalled at the thought of having a possibly wicked stepmother, especially with the memory of their friend Jeffrey's horrible stepfather fresh in their minds from their summer adventure.

A MOPS is called immediately, and the girls formulate their Save-The-Daddy Plan, which involves finding the absolutely worst blind dates for their father that they can come up with. When Claire's candidate turns out to be a misfit ("Cruciatus," groans their Latin-addicted dad after his first date), Rosalind's best friend Anna sets up a date with her imperious skating instructor. Another dating disaster follows, and the Penderwicks are sure that their dad will drop the whole thing if they can come up with a couple more unsuitable pairings.

Meanwhile, the sisters have plenty to think about. An interesting new neighbor, Iantha Aronson, who is a faculty colleague of Mr. Penderwick's, moves in next door with her adorable toddler Ben, whose favorite (and only) word is "Duck," and Batty and her dog Hound take on the challenge of expanding Ben's vocabulary. When Jane is distraught by a C on her science essay, Skye, who adores science and math, agrees to write Jane's research reports in return for the imaginative Jane's ghosting Skye's creative writing projects. Jane immediately throws herself into Skye's assignment to write a play about Aztec religion, which she titles "Sisters and Sacrifice," a melodrama about maidens sacrificed to bring rain to the maize crop. Jane's play is a hit; Skye, as the supposed author, is lionized, and the play goes into production for Sixth-Grade Performance Night, with the unwilling Skye in the lead role.

When Jane is not busy being her sister's acting coach, she and Skye are absorbed in their soccer league, especially in their rivalry with Cameron Hardware's team, headed by Skye's rival, the prissy Melissa Patneaude. Batty's happy world is marred only by occasional sightings of a scary sunglass-wearing figure she names "The Bug Man," while Rosalind feels her first pangs of romantic jealousy as her old friend Tommy Geiger acquires a possessive girlfriend named Trilby. Mr. Penderwick's romantic life, however, seems to be taking a turn for the better with several reportedly pleasant dates with a woman named Marianne, until the girls discover that "Marianne" is purely fictitious, used by the desperate dad to stop the succession of dates arranged for him by Claire and the girls.

Then Rosalind has an insight that will change their lives. As they celebrate Skye's team's victory, Rosalind suddenly sees that her dad and Iantha really "like" each other. Reversing their field, a hurriedly-called MOPS hatches a plan to disable their dad's car so that he will be forced to drive to a university gala with Iantha, who is looking resplendent in a green-blue silk gown, with hopes that they will enjoy a significantly romantic dinner together.

It's a wonderful conclusion, with everything happening at once--the soccer team's victory, Jane's happily stepping in for the fainting Skye to play the lead in Sisters and Sacrifice, their confession to their father of their dishonest authorship agreement, and the budding romance between their warm and loving neighbor Iantha and their father. Even the Bug Man is involved in a rousing climax, out of which Rosalind and Tommy pledge to be boyfriend and girlfriend--as soon as they both turn thirteen! And none of these events are even close to the major happening of the season! Whew! Just a average autumn for the Penderwicks!

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street is a worthy sequel to the 2007 National Book Award-winning The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy. (Penderwicks (Quality)) Realistically drawn, the Penderwick sisters come through as genuine individuals who nonetheless manage to blend into a one-of-a-kind close-knit family. As Booklist's reviewer said it so well, it's "just the sort of cozy fare that is missing in today's mean girl world."

For a review of The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, (Penderwicks (Quality)) see my post of March 11, 2007.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Growing Up IV: Jack's Power: Stories from a Caribbean Year by Jack Gantos

Jack Henry is off again on another funny-sad year, this time in Barbados, where his screwball dad hopes to make a million in construction.

The story begins as Jack's father gallantly rescues a British honeymoon couple from the raging surf. Pumped up by his heroic status, Jack, Sr., challenges Jack to conquer his fear of horses and assigns little brother Pete to "help" with the quest. Although Jack succeeds in taking a turn on the hotel's meanest mount, Pete manages to get Jack seriously kicked in the head in the process. Other insults to Jack's person and ego follow, as he chases beheaded chickens for their cook, gets blood poisoning and winds up painted with gentian violet, and is forced to try to make friends under cover of darkness to hide his all-over purple hue.

Jack's ever present journal fills with hilarious and sometimes scary entries as Jack falls hopelessly and helplessly in love with a rich girl who disdains his "immaturity," searches for a missing boy who is found dead beneath his favorite movie house, and tries to make a bundle by becoming joint owner of a fighting gamecock with his dad's hopelessly hooked gambling buddy. As in the other Jack Henry books, Jack takes the eccentric characters who pass through his life with humor and a remarkable ability to ricochet through bizarre events without losing his good nature.

Most of Jack's dilemmas arise from the conflicting advice his dad loves to hand out and the risky behaviors he often exhibits. A man of considerable energy and courage, his grip on reality sometimes seems a bit tenuous. Here's the wisdom of Jack, Sr., when he and Jack's mom return from a near death experience at sea:

"How was it?" I asked. I wanted to know all the scary details. I was hoping he had a couple gruesome stores to tell me.

"Man against the sea," he said gruffly. "And man won."

"I mean, how'd you get a hole in the boat?"

"We hit a floating coconut tree and it stove in the hull."

"Oh." I thought it might be more frightening.

"I'd like to know who threw that coconut tree into the ocean," he said angrily. "Absolutely irresponsible."

I guessed that it was possible that some nut threw a tree into the ocean, hoping it would sink a boat. But it seemed more possible that it had just been washed off the shore by waves. "Could have been an accident," I ventured.

"There's no room for accidents on the ocean, son," he replied. "It's a serious world out there."

As cane fires spread through the island, Jack, Sr., admits that the family is bankrupt, and Jack watches their cat Celeste and dog BoBoII loaded up by the Humane Society and taken away. As their plane spirals up over the island on the way back to Florida, Jack looks back on the island and on his year:

Once we were up in the air I looked out the window. The sugarcane fires were still glowing. As we traveled farther away I thought Barbados would look frightening, as if we had just escaped a burning ship. But I was wrong. The fires stretched from coast to coast like party lights strung across the deck of a beautiful luxury liner. It wasn't the island that was sinking. It was us. The plane banked to the west. I looked out the window. The island was gone.

Luckily for his many fans, Jack's Power is a pleasant vacation interlude which prefaces his next mainland adventure at his new school, Sunrise Junior High School, which Gantos points out ironically is a slightly refurbished state prison. In the final book in the Jack Henry series, our hero tries to pass seventh grade at last and get through the coming throes of adolescence.