Sequels are just hard. Especially when the first was so surprisingly charming. You can't do that twice. Not while people are watching, anyway.
I enjoyed this, if not quite as much as the first. Certainly kids who liked the first will like this one. I do love the way Birdsall captures everything I love (now, and as a child) about old-fashioned-sibling-adventure stories and brings them up to modern days. I'm sure I would have loved reading about characters who read the same books I did. Birdsall also does a great job of seamlessly weaving together the multiple perspectives.
My only quibbles are totally unfair ones. I loved that Mr. Penderwick's widower status was imply accepted; it wasn't a focus of the first book, and I wonder if the girls will be able to retain the freedom to keep having adventures. I wish that Mr. Penderwick and Iantha could have at least had a prolonged courtship. Perhaps Mr. Penderwick truly hated dating so much that he chose a quick remarriage to avoid it. I also continue to have questions about how old Batty actually is. Is she two? Four? Somewhere between? It seems to fluctuate between chapters.
I was intrigued by the concept of this one. Ten authors each wrote a chapter. I’d love to know what the process was. From what I’ve read (one interview is here), it seems that the chapters were completed individually, in order, although perhaps not the order they appear in the final book. I enjoyed seeing how it starts out as Maggie’s story, but is really Gee’s, despite a half-hearted return to Maggie at the end. I don’t remember who was responsible for the fantastical twist (it might have been Nick Hornby, but it was developed by Greg McGuire), but that element didn’t quite fit in. Besides, I’ve never really been able to just accept fantasy elements in an otherwise realistic book without some kind of explanation. “Just because it’s magic” doesn’t cut it.
I picked up this one after reading about it on a children's lit blog. Unfortunately, I don't remember which one.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable book. It reminds me of A Drowned Maiden's Hair by Laura Amy Schlitz, but in subject matter, not writing style. While I wasn't blown away by anything in particular, I found myself wanting to pick this one up even when I wasn't on the train- always a good sign. I wasn't exactly sure what was going to happen, and the ending was satisfying. I especially like that the romance was left so open-ended. The uncertainty of that saved the ending from being too tidy.
I was about to tag this "historical fiction" because, I suppose it is, being set in the 1920s, however, almost nothing about the book conveys a particular time or place (despite the explicit mention of rural upstate New York and flapper dresses). Really, it could be in any small town in any post-industrial, pre-war era when flim-flam artists and con men could stay just one town ahead of the law.
I remember going to a conference on historical fiction once, quite a few years ago. What I retained was the difference between historical fiction, which features actual historical people such as Johnny Tremain or Little House on the Prairie, and period fiction, which is set in the past, such as Mildred Taylor's books or Long Way From Chicago. It is an interesting distinction, especially since I more often find myself annoyed by the appearance of actual people in fiction. The Royal Diaries is a good example; I hate that they have taken real people and made up diaries for them, with little or no documentation or indication of what is real and what is not. If I were to encounter Johnny Tremain now, would I feel the same way about it? I don't think so, because the historical people are secondary characters, and while I haven't read it in some time, I think it is historically substantiated. But perhaps I only think that because it's a classic and I never questioned it.
And then what do we do with Little Women and Secret Garden? They sure seem like period fiction now, but when they were written, they were contemporary. Do we need a third term? And if so, what would it be?
Sequels are just hard. Especially when the first was so surprisingly charming. You can't do that twice. Not while people are watching, anyway.
