The Penderwicks at Last
by Jeanne Birdsall; read by Susan Denaker
Intermediate     Listening Library     Rev. 7/18
7 CDs     8.37 hrs.     978-0-525-59559-5     $55.00

This closing volume in the beloved Penderwick series, featuring two sisters’ marriages and one’s heartbreak, is told from the point of view of eleven-year-old Lydia, the youngest Penderwick half-sister. Denaker voices Lydia with a squeaky youthfulness that makes her childlike decision-making quite believable. Animal-loving Batty, now nineteen, is also voiced with a youngish, nasal tone that recalls her role as the former baby of the family, while other Penderwick sisters speak with the grace and fluidity of the young women they have grown to be. Best of all, Denaker infuses her general narration with the passion, flightiness, ingenuousness, and sense of possibility that characterize the Penderwick world.

From the November/December 2018 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.