A Warm Family Treat

The Cottage Holiday, Jo Mendel
The Tuckers series of books began in 1961 with the publication of the Whitman book The Wonderful House, in which the family moves into the big old house on Valley View Avenue in the fictitious town of Yorkville after having lived in a small apartment in nearby Castleton. They were a typical 1960s literary family: working father, stay-at-home mother, five rambunctious kids under twelve, loving grandparents, a big wooly dog, and a cat, plus an assortment of friends. The kids got into usual foibles: rivalries, mistaken impressions, summer vacation adventures, arguments, but family love always wins through.

The Cottage Holiday revolves around Penny, the shy seven-year-old, who catches cold easily and is always being pampered. But she doesn't revel in the attention; she inwardly resents it, and is tired of being told to sit still and take pills. She wants to play with her brothers and sisters and be part of family activities, and she wants to know what her part is in the scheme of family dynamics: Tina's domestic, Terry's clever, Merry's musical, Tom's sensible, but what is she? Then she makes an idle wish: she would like to spend Christmas at the family's lake cottage, where they could all participate on an equal footing. Surprisingly, her pediatrician says she's well enough to do so as long as she takes precautions, and suddenly the family is off for a winter adventure that includes a marauding cougar, a missing calf, an abandoned baby, and the sheer fun of finding a Christmas tree, not to mention making treats for one another, playing in the snow with their lake neighbors Mel and Butch Smith, having an ice-skating party, and doing other fun activities that didn't involve staring at a screen or manipulating a game controller.

The story is simply told with a limited vocabulary that often makes the dialog stilted. Yet Penny's wish to participate more fully in her family's activities shines through the story like a beacon, and the final pages will make you misty eyed. It's more introspective than the other books in the series and that serves to make the story more timeless. A yearly treat for me. Penny's search for self is something everyone, adult or child, can identify with, and Christmas just adds irresistible icing to the cake.