The Four Seasons of Patrick
by Susan Hughes
Red Deer Press, 2013
ISBN 978-0-88995-505-9
$9.95 sc, 80 pp, ages 9+
reddeerpress.com
I really liked Patrick in the story because he is just like me. We both wanted to build tree houses and we both have older brothers.
This story is broken into four parts. Each part has three chapters. Each part is about one of the seasons of the year. The story starts with winter and ends with autumn. I found this book easy to read.
The Four Seasons of Patrick starts with just Patrick, his dad and his brother, Trevor, but Linda and Claire soon become part of the family when his dad and Linda get engaged. The family needed to make room in the house for Linda and Claire. Patrick was not happy to have Linda and Claire move into his house. This meant he would have a new little sister. Patrick wanted to have his own space and decided to build a tree house with his friend Harry. They looked for a long time to find a tree. Mr. Mutter, the neighbour, let the boys go onto his property to look for a tree. They found the perfect tree and it wasn’t even what Patrick had pictured in his head. Patrick and Harry and sometimes Trevor worked a lot on the tree house. They even had two separate rooms, one for each of them. At the end of the story Patrick realized that Claire felt lonely and sad because she had no one to play with and had to move into a new house. Patrick decided to build an extra room into the tree house for Claire so that she could have as much fun as the boys.
I really liked how Patrick got to spend so much time outside with his friend Harry. They did some really fun things outside like sledding, riding bikes and building a tree house. They even were able to sleep overnight in the tree house. I liked how the family spent time looking at the stars trying to find their mother’s star. I like to look at stars too and camp out in the summer to see shooting stars.
A good connection in the story for me was that I like to build forts at my house and at my Omi and Opa’s house. My brother, cousins and I all have forts, but my fort is the biggest.
This is a good book for anyone who wants to build or has built a tree house. If you like to spend time outside you will like this story too. I think this would be a good story to write more about because I would like to know what Patrick, Harry, and Claire do with their tree house.
Review by Brennen, age 10, grade 5.
This review is from Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Sept/Oct 2014 issue.
