Edward Eager – Becky Levine

I just finished reading The Penderwicks at Point Mouette, by Jeanne Birdsall. I love all the Penderwick books–they take me back to reading Edward Eager’s books and Mary Nash’s Mrs. Coverlet books when I was young. They also make me think of Elizabeth Enright’s books, which I didn’t find until I was in my forties (thanks to Jen Robinson), but which have the same flavor. It’s partially the pleasure of nostalgia that makes me lose myself in Birdsall’s books, but it’s also more than that.

It’s the writing.

I have to say I think this latest book is my favorite. It’s kind of different, because the story opens with Rosalind getting ready to spend two summer weeks with a friend, separated from the rest of the family–who are all heading off to a little house in Maine. Rosalind isn’t really in the book, which is an absolutely necessary plot device to put Skye–my wonderful impatient, frustrated, girl-with-a-real-temper Skye–in charge as the OAP (Oldest Available Penderwick). A job she SO does not want.

I’m not going to go into a full review of the book–I recommend the whole series wholeheartedly, but I also think you could just pick up any one of them and fall in love, especially this one.

What I want to talk about is something I think Birdsall does especially well in the Point Mouette book–she writes a fun, charming, easy book…with stakes.

I have one of those books in a drawer–the ones we write & write on and revise & revise, then submit and, in the long run, get rejections for. I love this book, which is how I suspect most of us feel about our drawer books. But I also know what’s missing. You guessed it: stakes.

Several agents and editors were nice enough to explain that the book was perhaps too quiet, that they didn’t feel the things the characters went through mattered enough–not necessarily, I don’t think, that the events weren’t big enough, but that they weren’t getting the feel of how important these events were to the hero. As the book sits in the drawer, it also sits in the back of my mind, and every now and then–as I work on more current projects–I wonder about what it is I can and should do to revise–yet again–and amp things up for my hero.

I’m not going to get into spoilers, but Birdsall achieves just what I want and need to for my book. I don’t think anyone would call a Penderwick book heavy,–I think light is a much better and probably most often applied adjective. Light in a good way–that you smile a lot as you read her books, that you laugh out loud, that the story moves quickly (even with the nostalgic feel), and that it is a sheer, happy pleasure to be immersed in the stories.

And yet…Skye REALLY doesn’t want to be OAP. The humor around her taking on the job Rosalind has carried for five years is absolutely brilliant and wonderfully funny. Skye’s worries and fears also are woven in with humor, but at the same time, you GET why she doesn’t want this responsibility, and why it isn’t easy for her to handle. That’s real. The same with Batty’s missing Rosalind and the nighttime fears she doesn’t share with anyone except Hound, the family dog. Very sweet, very charming, and–again–very real. Batty doesn’t remember their mother; Rosalind has carried that role for as long as Batty knows. And it’s hard for her to be separated from her biggest sister. Truly hard. And we feel that. The scenes total maybe 5 or 10 pages in the entire book, but we feel what Batty’s feeling in every word.

And then the Big Thing. No, I’m not going to give away what the Big Thing is–I’m telling you, go read the books. The Big Thing doesn’t come along until very close to the end of the book (unless you’re a much smarter reader than me, which–in terms of plots & secrets–isn’t actually hard to be), but when it hits…BOOM. It is intense. And hard. And, once more, so absolutely real.

It matters. Suddenly all the light reality that has made us love these characters so much gets completely transformed into anxiety and heartache and hope. Yes, because it’s a huge deal and, yes, because the outcome could go either a good way or a bad way, but mostly, I think, because of the work Birdsall has done before. The realness she has woven into every scene, every moment, has created characters that we care about–that we sympathize and empathize with. With the perfect touch, never forgetting to charm us and make us smile, she has shown us that the things that happen in this world–small or big–matter to these people.

So, yeah, they matter to us.

This week is National Library Week. Let me tell you, with my reading habit, if I didn’t have libraries (yes, I use more than one!), I would be in serious trouble–emotional and financial! I still pretty much check out the maximum number of books the libraries will allow & that I can carry. I love browsing the new-book shelves for surprises, and I love running across an old favorite I haven’t thought of for years…and that I get to read again.

When I was a little girl, I picked up Edward Eager’s Half Magic. And I read this…which showed me that there was someone else out there who felt about books and libraries the same way I did. My apologies to nonfiction writers, but, yes, this is pretty much how I felt when I was young. I’m learning… 🙂

Still, even without the country or a lake, the summer was a fine thing, particularly when you were at the beginning of it, looking ahead into it. There would be months of beautifully long, empty days, and each other to play with, and the books from the library.

In the summer, you could take out ten books at a time, instead of three, and keep them a month, instead of two weeks. Of course you could only take four of the fiction books, which were the best, but Jane liked plays and they were nonfiction, and Katharine liked poetry and that was nonfiction, and Martha was still the age for picture books, but they didn’t count as fiction but were often nearly as good.

Mark hadn’t found out yet what kind of nonfiction he liked, but he was still trying. Each month, he would carry home his ten books and read the four good fiction ones in the first four days, and then read one page each from the other six, and then give up. Next month he would take them back and try again. The nonfiction books he tried were mostly called things like “When I was a Boy in Greece,” or “Happy Days on the Prairie”–things that made them sound like stories, only they weren’t. They made Mark furious.

“It’s being made to learn things not on purpose. It’s unfair,” he said. “It’s sly.” Unfairness and slyness the four children hated above all.

The library was two miles away, and walking there with a lot of heavy, already-read books was dull, but coming home was splendid–walking slowly, stopping from time to time on different strange front steps, dipping into the different books. One day Katharine, the poetry lover, tried to read Evangeline out loud on the way home, and Martha sat right down on the sidewalk after seven blocks of it, and refused to go a step farther if she had to hear another word of it. This will tell you about Martha.

After that Jane and Mark made a rule that nobody could read bits out loud and bother the others.

In two days, I’ll be running up the hill to visit my main library–which I’ve shown on my blog before. In case you haven’t seen the photo…

Who could resist? Happy National Library Week. Go, celebrate, read!

Tag: Edward Eager

THE PENDERWICKS AT POINT MOUETTE: Problems That Do Matter

National Library Week