Penguins seems like a fitting theme for January’s Discovery & Play Guide, don’t you think? They’re such funny little fellows, with their tuxedos and waddling walk. They are cute and playful, sliding down snowy hills, and they are also surprisingly graceful and fast when they dive underwater. I have some fun links for you (would you have expected Benedict Cumberbatch to make an appearance in this email?), plus the penguins book list, but if you want to get straight to downloading the guide, scroll down and you’ll find it at the end of this email.
“[Penguins] are extraordinarily like children, these little people of the Antarctic world, either like children or like old men, full of their own importance and late for dinner, in their black tail-coats and white shirt-fronts — and rather portly withal.” —Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World (1922)
Interesting penguin things to read, watch, or listen to.
➵ An unexpected benefit to Covid lockdown was this video of Humboldt penguins on a field trip to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. I mean, come on! ADORABLE.
➵ There are few things I appreciate as much as a famous person not taking themselves too seriously, and this moment on Graham Norton’s show with Benedict Cumberbatch about his difficulty with the word “penguin” definitely falls into that category.
➵ On penguins’ bodies: “Their body is very weird for a bird,” Proffitt said. But, he noted, during the Antarctic winter emperor penguins can walk some fifty miles to their nest sites; they scramble over cliffs, jump over obstacles, and scale sheer surfaces: “They’re clearly doing something right.” (from “How the Penguin Got Its Waddle” by Ed Yong, The New Yorker)
➵ If you enjoy illustration and graphic design like I do, you might enjoy this article from Penguin Books about how their logo has evolved: “A number of changes were made, some of them very subtle, including placing the penguin’s feet on the horizon line rather than having his right foot kicking out and raising his beak slightly higher making him appear more ‘chipper’”.
9 books about penguins to read with your kids.
Out of all the children’s books about penguins (of which there are plenty), these are the nine that made the cut. I only pick books that I personally enjoyed, that passed the test of my real human children, and that I wouldn’t mind reading more than twice. I do all of this for you!
Little Penguin by Patrick Benson
One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by David Small
Turtle’s Penguin Day by Valeri Gorbachev
Born to Fly by Patrick Guest, illustrated by Jonathan Bentley
The Trouble with Penguins by Rebecca Jordan-Glum
Flight School by Lita Judge
Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger
About Penguins: A Guide for Children by Cathryn Sill, by John Sill
A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis
I’ve linked to Amazon for the sake of convenience, but I love AbeBooks, ThriftBooks, and eBay for finding used copies of books. And of course nothing beats your local public library.
Quote of the Day
“You can't not be happy around penguins. You're, unfortunately, happy and cold, but the happiness makes up for the coldness.” —Carla Gugino
Penguin Guide
Here come the penguins! The Penguin Discovery & Play Guide is full of snacks, poems, videos, songs, games, and simple activities to do with your children. It’s a PDF, so you can print it out if you prefer to go analog, but the formatting is intended to make it easy to use on your mobile device.