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Do you think Mommy would be angry? (Rosalind) Angry at our plans and counterplans, with your father sneaking out in the middle of it all to read a book? No, Rosy. I think she'd be laughing herself into fits.

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street 

I love how Elizabeth Penderwick is characterized in death. Loving and vivacious, yes, but we know from the bits of her that Skye embodies that she could be stubborn and hot-tempered. Human, in other words. Her family will think about her every day. There will be an empty seat for her at every wedding, every graduation, every heartbreak, but they will learn to love without her. They will know for certain that she would have been best friends with Iantha and fallen in love with Ben and Lydia, despite Lydia’s protests that they couldn’t both exist at the same time and Skye’s reassurances about parallel universes. I can only hope for a death this sweet.  

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Almost summer…

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette

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Tell me this isn’t Jeffrey thinking about Skye every day they didn’t talk, loving a girl who will always belong to the night sky, a girl who can’t love him because she thinks she needs to first soak up the universe, wondering if she missed him while she was looking for herself out there. 

“But tell me, did you sail across the sun?

Did you make it to the Milky Way? 

To see the lights all faded 

And that heaven is overrated

Tell me

Did you fall from a shooting star? 

One without a permanent scar?

And did you miss me while you were

Looking for yourself out there?”

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On eavesdropping

“Shh,” said Skye, and now everyone noticed that she was lurking near the door. 

“You’re eavesdropping!” said Jane. 

“Eavesdropping isn’t honorable. I just happen to be standing here, that’s all,” said Skye. 

Her reasoning was so logical that her sisters decided to stand with her...

--Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street 

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Merry Christmas to the Penderwick family!

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--Lydia smashing a quesadilla in Oliver’s face

--Mr. Penderwick being absolutely unsurprised and amused to find Batty and Hound in his car on their “secret mission” to spy on his date

--Skye telling Mrs. Tifton that Rosalind got her party dress, which Churchie tailored, from the Salvation Army (went over my head as a child)

--The fact that Iantha, a scientist and college professor, named her cat Asimov (also went over my head) 

--The entirety of the Save-Daddy-Plan as well as the subsequent Get-Martin-and-Iantha-Together-Plan 

--The sisters + Ben + Tommy + Hound terrorizing Norman Birnbaum (the creep who tried to steal Iantha’s research) 

--Everyone refusing to let Jeffrey leave with Dexter at Point Mouette 

--Skye and Jane carrying a half-sleeping Ben to and from the Geiger household to see Nick the very night he returned

--Iantha inviting Jane for grilled cheese and chocolate milk when she didn’t get to visit Jeffrey in Boston 

Guys what are your favorite iconic Penderwicks moments

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Fan art I never knew I needed!

Penderween.

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“Halloween was not for worrying about Daddy and dates. Halloween was for candy and being out later than you usually were allowed, and for showing your new dinosaur costume to the neighbors”

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street 

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Jane: I have no words. 

Nick: It was just a joke

Jane: Oh, no, wait. I found some. Jerk! Ass! Arrogant! Inconsiderate! Mindless! Frat boy! Lowlife! Buttface miscreant!

Nick: Buttface miscreant?

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Spring and Gardam Street-themed playlists

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0g4h81lcmnFiPNN5k0MeCW?si=jDvGc5P4QT6acXcpcbadbg

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1OVHRXKT6IWdwvBh1Gaoeg?si=ZNY_BBWYTeePyFIii2

Thank you for your submission Anon! The Spring playlist is especially helpful for me seeing as so many musical references went over my head, haha. And Gardam Street is my absolute favorite of the series, so I’m glad that you put this together! 

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Oh dear, having discovered the series when I received the first book as a present for my ninth birthday and awaiting the next installment over the course of a decade and being nineteen when the final book came out, the same age as Batty (!), the jumble of emotions, memories, and nostalgia is acute. 

Tonight’s mood is crying and clutching the last book of a series I started in the fourth grade and realizing that it really is dreadfully soon that I’ll leave for college and I truly will have to grow up

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I was always enamored of space, but The Penderwicks series was 100% why I continually proclaimed that I would be an astrophysicist when I grew up. 

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, Jeanne Birdsall

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Skye: I repeat the question, why should we date?

Jeffrey: Because we’re clearly attracted to each other. 

Skye: I’m attracted to pie, it doesn’t mean I feel the need to date pie.

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If you ever wrote penderwicks fanfiction I would 100% read it and I would be delighted. 😁💛💛🌞

I’m actually working on something at the moment! I am so touched by your message! 

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A stray thought from the void

It’s strange. I have now had multiple dreams involving the Penderwicks. Not the characters, but the physical books, with strangely familiar floral covers and pale yellow spines teetering on a bookshelf. Dreams are so difficult to transcribe, the plot incoherent without the emotional weight that only the dreamer carries. All I know is that there are so many stories about these girls that are waiting to be told -- perhaps my subconscious is still working through the disappointment of how the series ended? Ha. My dreams were much closer to the complex domestic drama I’d originally envisioned for the finale than the milquetoast closing we got. 

There are a few gems in the rough that we know as fanfiction...perhaps it is finally time for me to write the stories I ache to read. 

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Damn I love the Aztec thing and JANE IS LITERALLY MY IDOL SO I LOVE HOW ACCURATE HER PLAY WAS

Jane is so underrated! 

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Thank you so much for having a penderwicks blog!!! I love the penderwicks so much and it makes me so happy to know that other people love them as much as i do. When I’m older and allowed to have a tumblr, I plan on having a blog with a lot of penderwicks stuff. In the meantime though, it’s lovely to know that other people are already doing that! 💛💛💛 hope you have a lovely day

What a lovely message! This made my day!

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in my so-called “real” life who’s heard of the Penderwicks, so I love the online community surrounding it.