Comfort Read #3

The Tuckers: The Cottage Holiday, Jo Mendel

I've had this book since I was about ten years old, and I read it every Christmas. It was part of a series that began with The Wonderful House, about the Tucker family (dad, stay-at-home but active mom, five kids, a big furry dog, and a black cat) moving to a big house in the fictional town of Yorkville from a city apartment.

The older, active kids (Tina, Terry, and Merry) get the lion's share of the other books, but this is the first of the two that center around Penny. Penny, age 7, is susceptible to colds, stays home sick a lot, and is starting to resent it. She wants to have adventures like her older siblings. Even her little brother Tom is stronger than she is. As the story opens, she wishes the family could spend Christmas at their lake house, where they could play in the snow and skate and romp to their hearts' content. To her surprise, her doctor says that if she takes precautions, she's healthy enough to go. And so they decamp to the lake, where they truly have an adventurous Christmas, contending with an abandoned baby, a cougar that's killing local livestock, and Penny's search for her true self.

It's told in simple vocabulary, but Christmas at Lake Annabelle sounds like a blast; I would have loved to have spent it with the Tuckers. And Penny also gets a surprise about herself. "Very kringly," as Betty Roberts of Remember WENN might say.
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