Mr. Popper's Penguins

Mr. Popper’s Penguins By: Richard and Florence Atwater  Illustrations By: Robert Lawson

Mr. Popper loves his job and the people of Stillwater love him. He is a painter and decorator, the only problem is that he only works part of the year, but he does not mind because then he can spend the rest of the year studying his favorite places the Arctic and the Antarctic. He would love to travel to visit them someday and knows so much about them. Then one day the most unexpected thing happens, Mr. Popper receives a gift from the Antarctic, a penguin that he names Captain Cook.  Mr. Popper is thrilled and his kids are too, he wife is unsure.     Mr. Popper loves his new penguin and takes him everywhere, but Captain Cook begins to get sad so Mr. Popper doesn’t know what to do. Well a vet tells him his penguin is lonely so a zoo sends him a female penguin named Greta. Pretty soon Mr. Popper has 12 penguins living in his house.  That is a lot of mouths to feed so he gets them a job on stage. While this works for a little while it does not work out and Mr. Popper and the penguins are sent to jail.  What is to become of these animals and their family?  Read to find out.

I love this book. I want to use it with my class this year and that is why I re read it.  I know that it is a movie and would like to see how they changed it for film. It would be  a great assignment to compare the two. I love the story for its totally ridiculous nature and its fun.  It has so many quirky things that are so funny and totally outrageous like having your house covered in snow to help keep the penguins cool. 

I have a class set of these books and can't wait to use them this year. ISBN: 0-590-47733-1