The Penderwicks !!

Last week, after discovering that my favorite childhood series, The Penderwicks had a new, final addition to the series, I immediately went to the library to check it out. Even though I am only a third of the way done with it, I have been loving it already. The book takes place several years after the previous one. In the second to last book, their stepmother gives birth to a girl named Lydia. She does not get much exposure in the previous book, so The Penderwicks at Last follows her as the main character.

While this is not a particularly difficult or thought provoking book, I personally have been enjoying every moment of it so far. There are moments where I almost get chills reading it because it takes me right back to my childhood when I first read this series. The family is back in Arundel, the place where they met their best friend Jeffrey and spent their summer. This book refers back to moments in the first book, describing the time Batty almost got attacked by the bull, when Jeffreey and Skye quite literally ran into each other at the garden tunnel, or when Mrs. Tifton would get furious with the fun loving yet mischievous Penderwick sisters. I hadn't thought about this series in years, but once I started reading this book, it's like I read the series just yesterday.

One character that I really enjoyed reading about is Batty. In the pervious books, she was a young child. Now, she is in college and it is fun to see her character development and what kind of an adult she ended up becoming. She used to be the baby and Rosalind would have to take care of her, comforting her when she would get scared or shy.  Now, Batty is taking on that older sister role for Lydia. The scene that comes to mind is when she and Lydia get to Arundel first and they decide to clean the mansion before everyone else gets there. This is the "responsible" thing to do, and in previous books, Batty would have been more like Lydia and preferred to play rather than clean everything. She takes on a motherly role when she cleans the spider infestation and slowly coaxes them outside rather than killing them. This still shows the soft and delicate side of Batty. I am looking forward to continuing this book because I want to see how the family as a whole interacts. Right now, I haven't read a lot about Skye, Jane, or Rosalind, and I am interested on how their characters have changed as well. One person I would like to have learned more about is Ben, their half brother.  He wasn't very prominent in the other books, and it doesn't look like he will be in this one either. I guess I will just have to wait and see when I get further along in my reading.