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shirleytupperfreeman's review
Be careful what you wish for... Penelope lives a dreadfully uncomplicated and boring life. Her wish for more adventure is granted when all of a sudden her father loses his job, her parents inherit a house in the sticks, and life as Penny knows it is altered forever. This is a cute story for the 8-12 year old set - with some unsubtle lessons of the consequences of making assumptions about people. Characters include a deaf child, a kid with two Moms, a professional Mom who becomes a garbage collector, a boy with paranoid parents (who sound like many parents of today) and many folk barely making ends meet. Penny grows a little in her interactions with each.
cimorene1558's review against another edition
4.0
Great fun, and a fine homage to some of the books that Penny reads during the course of the story, especially "Magic or Not" and all of Edward Eager generally. A very quick read, but none the worse for that!
rbreade's review
Ten-year-old Penelope Grey lives in a mansion in the city with her parents but is bored. Two wishes made in the family wishing well seem to move the plot along by changing the Greys' circumstances, though this connection isn't explicitly made. At other points in the novel, Penny will search for similar signs and guidance and will find what she needs, though Snyder keeps it ambiguous so that it doesn't seem as if Penny is being handed easy answers by plot conventions.
The similarity and differences between stories and life is a theme of the book. This is most obvious toward the end, long after the Greys have had to move from the city to a ramshackle collection of houses in the mountains of Tennessee, inherited by Penny's mom, Delia Dewberry Grey, when the Greys need more money than they have in order to pay off the house's debts and avoid losing both it and the quirky tenants who lived in the connected buildings with Delia's great-great-aunt. Penny believes she can find the long-lost gold of local legend, Briscoe Blackrabbit. She and her friends explore the nearby caverns and actually find an abandoned miner's post deep underground, bringing up and lugging home a heavy wooden box. However, when they open the box, it holds only empty bottles. In a certain kind of story, the box would contain the gold and the money problem would be solved, but, Snyder is saying, this is not that kind of story. Instead, she goes for an It's A Wonderful Life ending, with the tenants pitching in enough money to keep the bank from foreclosing.
Unusual for its use of omniscience, if only taking full advantage of it in places. Most of the time, the story stays with Penny, though maintaining a great deal of psychic distance, constantly referring to her as "Penny" and her parents by their names rather than "mom" and "dad," as you'd find in 3rd person close.
The similarity and differences between stories and life is a theme of the book. This is most obvious toward the end, long after the Greys have had to move from the city to a ramshackle collection of houses in the mountains of Tennessee, inherited by Penny's mom, Delia Dewberry Grey, when the Greys need more money than they have in order to pay off the house's debts and avoid losing both it and the quirky tenants who lived in the connected buildings with Delia's great-great-aunt. Penny believes she can find the long-lost gold of local legend, Briscoe Blackrabbit. She and her friends explore the nearby caverns and actually find an abandoned miner's post deep underground, bringing up and lugging home a heavy wooden box. However, when they open the box, it holds only empty bottles. In a certain kind of story, the box would contain the gold and the money problem would be solved, but, Snyder is saying, this is not that kind of story. Instead, she goes for an It's A Wonderful Life ending, with the tenants pitching in enough money to keep the bank from foreclosing.
Unusual for its use of omniscience, if only taking full advantage of it in places. Most of the time, the story stays with Penny, though maintaining a great deal of psychic distance, constantly referring to her as "Penny" and her parents by their names rather than "mom" and "dad," as you'd find in 3rd person close.
misajane79's review
4.0
Pretty sure I would have loved this book even if she hadn't name-dropped just about every single one of my favorite children's books.
Plenty of bits of magic sprinkled in with reality. Penny is delightful, even though I did find her parents pretty annoying throughout. Her friends were great, and I giggled and smiled throughout. Recommended.
Plenty of bits of magic sprinkled in with reality. Penny is delightful, even though I did find her parents pretty annoying throughout. Her friends were great, and I giggled and smiled throughout. Recommended.
readerpants's review
4.0
Cute, though not spectacular. Good for voracious girl readers, fans of The Penderwicks, The Railway Children, and other big-family-adventure stories, filled with allusions to classic kid lit. A perfect handsell at an indie bookstore in an upscale neighborhood, or a branch library with those readers.
lindacbugg's review
5.0
What to read next Oh what to read next! sigh I have the ARC and all the comments say this is just the right thing! lol
I loved this book-it's exactly the kind of book that would have been one of my favorites when I was a little girl! I loved all the mentions of other books that were Penny's favorites(alot of them were my favorites too)I will definetely be recommending this title to customers at my bookstore.
Penny Dreadful
by
Laurel Snyder
Penelope is bored-
So she makes a wish
for something, anything
to happen.
Then, her dad quits
his job, they run
out of money and
inherit a ramshakle
house in the middle
of nowhere.
Penny's new life
is too good to be
true or is it?
A wonderful story
of friends and
friendship that
made me smile!!
I loved this book-it's exactly the kind of book that would have been one of my favorites when I was a little girl! I loved all the mentions of other books that were Penny's favorites(alot of them were my favorites too)I will definetely be recommending this title to customers at my bookstore.
Penny Dreadful
by
Laurel Snyder
Penelope is bored-
So she makes a wish
for something, anything
to happen.
Then, her dad quits
his job, they run
out of money and
inherit a ramshakle
house in the middle
of nowhere.
Penny's new life
is too good to be
true or is it?
A wonderful story
of friends and
friendship that
made me smile!!
jnmfly's review
5.0
I loved this book! The characters in this book are charming and I couldn't help but fall in love with them. Once I got started, I couldn't put it down!
sharonfalduto's review
3.0
This is a juvenile fiction book. Penelope lives in a nice apartment in the city with her parents, but she is bored. She makes a wish in a well and soon her father has quit her job and life gets more interesting--but tense. Then her mother inherits a property in the country and they move there, which is where the book gets really interesting with fun new friends and a free range childhood for Penelope, who changes her name to what feels more suitable to her: Penny.
librarykristin's review
5.0
<3 Like the Penderwicks, Penny Dreadful is evocative of many of the classics of children's literature...but in a more overt way. Penny keeps wanting to BE in these novels, so the references to the classics take on a meta-fictional twist. Set in a fabulously quirky town, with fabulously quirky characters. Also, a great read for kids who may be having to figure out how to be happy with less in the down economy.