Not without some flaws, but overall, another charmer that will generate smiles, tears and fuzzy feelings.
A new and darker installment in the acclaimed series about the loving and bustling family.
Several years have passed since the events of the third title, The Penderwicks at Point Mouette (2011). This latest stars Batty, nearly 11 and youngest of the four original sisters, and two newer siblings—Ben, son of Mr. Penderwick’s second wife, whom he married at the end of Book 2, and Lydia, the 2-year-old born of this marriage. Batty studies piano passionately, and a new music teacher at school discovers that she sings beautifully, too, so the girl undertakes a dog-walking business to earn money for voice lessons. Then Batty overhears a sister’s comment that, shockingly, betrays long-held, deeply festering anger and resentment toward her. Sensitive Batty keeps the new revelation to herself and takes an emotional nose dive. How or whether this is resolved will keep readers turning pages. Newcomers to the series are assisted by explanations of characters and past events. Longtime fans will enjoy it, too, while feeling Batty’s pain and rooting for her recovery. They’ll also forgive what have become stock series trademarks: some improbable turns of events; almost-too-perfect familial and neighborly relationships; and nonchildlike dialogue issuing from the mouth of the babe. Not only is toddler Lydia’s speech beyond her years (as was Batty’s in the earlier books)—save for referring to herself in the third person—but she effortlessly communicates in several languages.
Not without some flaws, but overall, another charmer that will generate smiles, tears and fuzzy feelings. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-375-87077-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style.
A summer vacation turns out to be anything but relaxing for Greg and a teeming horde of Heffleys.
Gramma declines the offer of a grand birthday celebration, saying that “what would make her REALLY happy is if everyone else went to Ruttyneck Island”—though she prepares individual packs of her legendary meatballs. (“You knew exactly how much Gramma likes you by how many meatballs you got.”) A gaggle of Heffley relatives and a dog stuff themselves into a small beach house, where overcrowding, personality conflicts, and simmering resentments become just some of the ingredients in a rolling boil of sitcom-style catastrophes, not to mention questionable decisions ranging from leaving the kids to make dinner unsupervised to labeling a cooler “HUMAN ORGANS” to keep random passersby from helping themselves. As usual, Greg supplies the setups in poker-faced journal entries interspersed with black-and-white drawings of slouched figures bearing frowny expressions of dismay or annoyance to cue the laffs. Gramma, it eventually turns out, not only (unsurprisingly) has plans of her own, but is also keeping a shocking secret about those meatballs. To go with the knee-slapping set pieces, Kinney slips in a tasty bit of family lore about how Greg’s parents met, plus droll takes on such low-hanging comedy fruit as restaurant manners, viciously competitive board games, and social media influencers (Greg being one, albeit with zero followers, and his Aunt Veronica’s little dog being another, with 3.8 million).
An entertaining take on family values, Wimpy Kid style. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781419766954
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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