2 stars (It was okay)
After loving the first Penderwicks book, I was seriously let down by this one. My biggest problem was the cultural appropriation plotline: one of the sisters is a budding writer, and the other, a “tom boy,” is assigned to write a play as homework. They swap responsibilities, so the writer sister writes the play for the tom boy. The play is about a Native American young woman, except it’s a very “noble savages” take on a Native American story, and it made me very, very uncomfortable.
If it had been one little moment, it wouldn’t have been as big a deal. But the tom boy gets praised for writing the play, and then the school decides to put on the play with the tom boy in the lead role, and the lie gets way out of hand. The result was that a lot of pages were spent on the lines of the play and thinking about the play, and it’s just all very . . . last century. I think the 2000s can do better than this.
Plus, the silly romantic plotline with the dad didn’t work for me at all (though I did want him to end up with who he ended up with), and some of the things that I found the most charming (mainly Batty) in the first book were not there anymore. It’s still well written, and there were good, authentic character moments and funny moments, but overall I found this book a little too precious and cheesy and unbelievable to truly fall in love with.
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