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Reviewed by:
  • Penguin Day by Nic Bishop
  • Deborah Stevenson
Bishop, Nic Penguin Day; written and illus. with photographs by Nic Bishop. Scholastic, 2017 [32p]
ISBN 978-0-545-20636-5 $16.99
Reviewed from galleys         R 4-6 yrs

In this photo-illustrated story, a fluffy baby penguin wakes up hungry, so mama penguin joins the rest of the flock to hit the ocean and get some fish. Back at home, baby penguin goes a-wandering (it's not clear how papa penguin, who's supposed to be watching the chick, lets that happen) and almost gets eaten by a predatory skua bird, but fortunately Papa intervenes in time. By that time, the mother is back with food, baby gets fed, and it's time for the kid to go back to sleep. Noted photographer Nic Bishop assembled this day-in-a-life story from pictures he took in Antarctica of several different rockhopper penguin families; his narration is streamlined and clear, easy for audiences just learning the rhythms of nature stories to follow. While the mother's regurgitation of food will need some explanation in situ, the author's note provides more info to prepare readers aloud. The real glory here, of course, is the photographs, and while rockhoppers don't get the love their cousins the emperor and Adèlie penguins do, they're a photogenic lot, with excitingly fluffy headgear and sunny orange bills. Mom's grocery shopping is especially visually dramatic, since she has to plunge into the roiling sea (there's a great overhead shot of the flock darting along underwater) for food and leap out of it like a gymnast when she's done; the still photographs capture more vividly than video the sheer athleticism of this daily outing. Audiences who love the natural history picture books of Nicola Davies and her ilk will find this a wonderful introduction to an animal it's especially unlikely kids will see in the wild.

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