Golden endpapers feature penguins tramping and swimming across the top and bottom of the page. ‘THE PENGUINS ARE COMING!’ shouts the opening double page spread with a very crowded zoo full of animals ‘a-buzz and a-roar and a-twitter’. None of these zoo animals know anything about penguins but each offers outlandish ideas about them—so outlandish that young readers will scoff and quickly correct these silly suggestions. For example, penguins make long flights stopping only for a pizza. Penguins demand kickboards and floaties to help them swim. Penguins wear funky beach ponchos. Penguins’ babies wear booties and woolly hats to stay warm. They’re party animals too–loud music and crazy dancing abound. Right? Wrong! The zookeeper stops all these nonsensical suggestions and lists three pages of what penguins are really like! Penguins are really quite sensible after all.
Meg McKinlay was inspired to write this story when her daughter came home from school one day excited by facts and figures about penguins. Mark Jackson’s illustrations, resembling watercolour and ink, feature highly detailed and often amusing caricatures of animals with anthropomorphic expressions. They playfully interact with other creatures including owls, bats, squirrels, anteaters, pelicans, swans, fish, emus, kangaroos, zebras, pandas, alligators, hippopotamus and more. After all these whimsical and incorrect suppositions, the zookeeper yells, STOP! and proceeds to reveal characteristics of penguins over the next three pages, concluding, ‘And that is the real, honest truth about penguins. Really.’
Picture Books for Older Readers
