Week One: The Penderwicks

Dear Rick,

I’ve been feeling a little guilty that my first choice for this project is The Penderwicks on Gardam Street. Especially with your more philosophical choice. So thank you – did I say this? – thank you for observing that Sunday afternoon at the coffeeshop that you couldn’t be sure which was more fun: reading the adventures of the Penderwicks, or watching me read their adventures. In that moment, I felt completely absolved for greedily choosing to be entertained and touched this very first week, instead of, say, challenged.

I do love the Penderwicks. And I love them for the same reasons I used to love the Huxtables. (Really.) Because they are gentle. Because the parents (and, in the case of the Penderwicks, parent) are smart, and the kids are smart. And precocious as all get out. I love the Penderwicks because there is a sweet exchange between grown-up and child. Because dad lovingly accepts the wrongdoings of his children – he is firm, but not argumentative; he acts from love and not ego – and is able to admit to his children when he has done wrong too, willingly submitting to loving firmness from the bottom up. And I love the Penderwicks books for their imagination. I am completely in awe that a grown woman remembers so precisely all the connections children make (at various ages) and all the conclusions they draw. I love that these books flow so easily from four-year-old feats of imagination to twelve-year-old struggles with quasi-independence.

I am all these girls, all at once. I am Batty, who communes with the very real, very anthropomorphic identities of animals (both actual and toy), who is proud of the horror she can create by bleeding on the clay at school, who sees the leaves of sassafrass trees and thinks of mittens; I am Jane, who is in love with melodrama and acting and dreams of becoming an author; I am Rosalind, who likes to bake and is confused by boys and feels thoroughly, completely a grown-up, until she doesn’t. I am Skye too, I suppose. Though I seem to have missed out on her math skills and neatness. Instead, I think, I have only her temper.

This is what you see when I read. I am wrapped in their story. It is partly my own. And partly what I wish mine had been. And simply delightful to read it told so poignantly.

Maybe someday you’ll meet them too. And we can laugh and sigh and gasp together over their adventures. [And we will overlook that the adventure on Gardam Street smacks a bit of Scooby Doo ("And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you kids" -- you'll see what I mean when you get there).] Because the narrative is so rich. With layers of feelings and literary jokes and even surprises. And because the Penderwicks are lovely. And nearly as family to me as, well, family.

Yours Ever,
Erin