World Penguin Day? EVERYTHING happens in April. Thanks to Pam for bringing it to my attention.
I absolutely agree that Mr. Popper’s Penguins is the definitive work on the subject. My first grade teacher, Mrs. Pyatt, read it to us, and I read it for myself probably dozens of times while I was growing up. Captain Jack, the talking emperor penguin in the Uncle Pirate books, owes a lot to those birds.
Recently, I learned that the story behind the book is not a very happy one. Mr. and Mrs. Atwater were living happily in Chicago, where he worked as a reporter. Richard Atwater started the book for fun, got stuck, and put it away. Before he could pick it up again, he was stricken with some kind of paralysis and couldn’t work any more. The Atwaters were in deep poverty. Then Florence Atwater picked up the manuscript and finished it. It’s ben in print ever since, which is as close as reali life comes to “and they all lived happily ever after.”
By the way, there are fifteen species of penguin, including the Adelie, rockhopper, king, emperor, and blue. The blues are the smallest and live in burrows.