Chinaberry

Chinaberry is a brick and mortar (gasp!) and online store that sells books, toys, and gifts with families in mind as its target audience.  The store is located in Spring Valley, California and is a great place to go if you’re looking to buy books from an independent business rather than a large bookstore chain.

What makes Chinaberry unique is the catalogs it sends out.  Each newsprint catalog contains color illustrations of Chinaberry’s products, but the best part are the reviews that accompany every book that Chinaberry offers.  The books are divided into age groups (there is even a section for adults) and each review gives a short summary of the book’s plot and key themes that run throughout the story.  Every tween book that I have read based on a Chinaberry review (including The Penderwicks, The Wild Girls, As Hot as it was You Ought to Thank Me, and Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters) has been a keeper.

Give yourself a treat and request a catalog.  It’s free and perfect for those times when you’re in between books, but still need something to cuddle up.  Sip some tea and figure out what you want to read next.   

Review: The Penderwicks

The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall.  Copy checked out from the San Diego County Library, Rancho San Diego Branch, based on a review in the Chinaberry Books Catalog.

2005 National Book Award Winner

            (click here to see other awards given to this book) (an interview with Jeanne Birdsall)

The Penderwick sisters, Rosalind, Skye, Jane and Batty have many adventures in store for them when they return to their summer vacation spot with their widower father.  At first glance, this book reminded me of one of those stereotypical idyllic children’s stories, the types that Francie Nolan detests in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  However, the Penderwick sisters would be the first to agree with Francie that a good story should mirror the trials of real life, and while the girls are not plagued by the themes used in dramatic hooks to advertise some tween fiction, they have problems to deal with, and problems to solve.  Rosalind’s trying to bake her way into an older boy’s heart, Skye is plotting strategies with her new best friend to keep him out of military school, Jane wants to write the next great American novel and is slowly realizing that all the information she needs for a good plot is happening all around her, Batty is coping with growing up without a mom and not being lost in the crowd as the youngest sibling.  Each sister is unique, sympathetic and likable.

This book is the first in the Penderwicks series.  The second book, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street is available, and the third installment, The Penderwicks at Point Mouette will be available later next year.

This book would be perfect for a precocious fourth grader, a fifth grader who enjoys to read, or a sixth, seventh, or eighth grader who is in need of a good story to help them see how fun reading can be.