Last week when our oldest nephew's Ken Follett request had worked its way through the communication chain to me, I wound up ordering Jeanne Birdsall's The Penderwicks for our youngest niece so that I could get free shipping. S. and I both read the first chapter and agreed it would make a good present for her—two years from now. Her mother has admitted she doesn't do reading, and while L.'s mother has assured me that she herself will read this book to M., I'm inclined to buy her something else today on our family marathon do-or-die shopping-at-the- last-minute excursion to the mall.

Maybe I'll read The Penderwicks—it did win the National Book Award for Young People's Literature—after finishing Beyond Black.