Penguins by Liz Pichon

Title: Penguins
Author: Liz Pichon
Reading Level: 4 - 8
Hardcover: 24 pages
Publisher: Orchard Books

What do a group of penguins at the zoo do all day? As soon as they wake up, they go for a swim and splish and splash. They eat fish. Look at people. Look at more people. Sleep standing up. And, on rainy days they pretty much do nothing. Their days are quite monotonous until one day a little girl drops a camera into their pen. A baby penguin straddles up to the camera and pokes and pecks at it, despite his mothers pleas. But, its only a camera. The penguins have loads of fun playing, poking and taking pictures with it. Its just plain hilarious the way they pose for the camera and when they run out of film, they put it back to be reclaimed by the zookeeper. 

My daughter is totally crazy about penguins (or "pingu" as we call it). That's probably an understatement. She lugs around her pingu (plush toy) everywhere she goes and eats and sleeps with it. She learned to say "piiiii" (for pingu) even before she said mom or dad. (No hard feelings there...) And I always keep an eye out for any penguin related books whenever I go to a library or a bookstore. For some reason, it was hard for me to find a book just about penguins (Of course, we have books with pictures of penguins here and there) and when I found this book perched upon a bookshelf at borders, I almost squealed in delight. There is not just one penguin to look at, but lots and lots of them on EVERY page. I knew she would love it and oh, boy was I right. 

This has been one of her most favorite books and god only knows how many times we would have read this so far. She especially loves the "Viewfinder" page where a small square hole is cut out like the camera lens and when she gets to see penguins through it, she squeals "piii... piii...". The pictures taken by the penguin (attached to the last page of the book) is an additional treat to her!! She loves looking at them and insists on having names for each penguin like mommy pingu, daddy pingu, baby pingu and so on. And, its so cute to watch her posing for a penguin (that looks up at her with a camera in his hand) with a great big smile. If you have a little one who is crazy about penguins, this is a must-have book!!

My Rating: 5/5