HOW THE PENGUINS SAVED VERONICA – Hazel Prior

This is a lovely story about an 86-year-old curmudgeon who decides to go to a scientific station in Antarctica to see the penguins. What ensues is gently humorous, scientifically factual, and full of family, love, disappointment, sorrow, overcoming setbacks, relationships, and coming to terms with yourself.

Prior writes warmly, gracefully, and clearly. Her characters live and grow and endear themselves to the reader. I enjoyed the relationship growth between the characters as they dealt with isolation and extreme cold along with the hardships of living and working in the unforgiving environment of an Antarctic scientific base.

The relationship of Veronica and her grandson develops in a natural way as they alienate each other on first meeting and then write notes and letters to each other as they each attempt to make amends.

A lovely book by a newish author. This is her second book. Her first, ELLIE AND THE HARPMAKER, is also worth your time.

5 of 5 stars

Mr. Popper paints houses in little city of Stillwater. Once the house-painting season is over, Mr. Popper settles in for the winter to read his travel books. He dreams of going to Antarctica one day. But one day Antarctica comes to him, in the form of a penguin in a package sent from the Antarctic explorer Admiral Drake. The penguin lives with the Popper family and creates quite a stir in little Stillwater. Mr. Popper and his penguin are photographed together during a stroll around town, and this sparks the interest of the national papers. Soon, another penguin arrives by mail, and to keep them happy, Mr. Popper installs a large freezing plant in the cellar, where the penguins begin laying eggs, and two penguins turn into eight. What will Mr. Popper do with all these penguins? 

Mr. Popper's Penguins is a great book to read aloud with great illustrations and funny imagery. This novel lends itself very well to predictions as you try and figure out what this family is going to do with all these penguins. It also does a great job introducing the problem and solution text structure as the penguins create more and more problems for Popper to solve.

Lexile: 910L 

A very fun and entertaining book.

Since this book was originally written in the 1930s, it has the distinct style of old children's books. It is very unrealistic and silly, but still a very good read.

I really enjoyed the ridiculous plot and funny situations that the Popper family and the penguins find themselves in.

Many of the things are outdated (Mrs. People's focus on tidiness, animal licence and ethnic treatment, people not knowing what a penguin is), but it is still readable today. I would suggest some adult assistance for very young readers to give some historical context on the pre-internet, pre-computer world.

A very good read. Highly entertaining.

Exquisitely -executed reproductions of iconic images of USian paintings and photography. Only with penguins instead of people. And one-liner captions.

It might have been amusing had it been poorly-drawn, amateurish, or childish cartoons. The internet Is mostly humorless jokes. But there is no amusing caption that can withstand such painstakingly art: these pictures, which are lovely, demand captions that take them seriously. Where it is charming to frame your child's kindergarten art and story, hiring pros to jazz it up is just creepy and sad and disappointing for everyone.

Library Copy

I didn't like this one as much as I did when I was a child. That was disappointing. It's still a fun story, though. Just a bit slower than I remember it being. But it still makes me wish I could have a basement full of penguins. :)