Penguin booklist

There is something cute and adorable about penguins. That may be why so many different schools have a penguin unit for kindergarten and preschool. When we used My Father’s World Kindergarten I put together a penguin booklist, and I realized I never shared it, which gives me a great excuse to add to my giant booklist of booklists. Ironically we studied swimming creatures during kindergarten (note for a Future Ticia, make a swimming creatures landing page beyond my ocean animals post), but unfortunately, our studies didn’t line up. If I’d planned that better I would have rearranged it to do so.

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The official penguin book for My Father’s World Kindergarten

Officially the book for the theme is Tacky the Penguin. It’s a story of how Tacky being different keeps his friends safe.

Tacky was such a popular book it became a series. The others in the series are also good, but they don’t have quite the same charm.

Creating a penguin unit

As I was typing up my penguin booklist, I realized I have some materials to create a penguin unit, especially as I’m working on a Mr. Popper’s Penguins book club to publish. So as I add in and create more ideas, I’ll add them in to create a penguin unit.

Penguin nonfiction booklist

I grabbed a whole slew of nonfiction penguin books, because it is fun to see many different viewpoints.

• Penguin Day– follows a family of rock hopper penguins as they find food and care for each other, great photographs
• An Old Man and His Penguin– We read this book back when we studied Brazil, so I’d seen it somewhat recently, but I’d forgotten how adorable the tale of a man who rescued a penguin covered in oil. You as the mom might want some kleenex for how heartwarming and wholesome it is.
• A Penguin Chick Grows Up– This is part of a series of how [fill in the blank animal] grows up, and pretty much every time I have an animal theme I look to see if these books exist.
• Caroline Arnold’s Animals: A Penguin’s World– I also love this series. Caroline Arnold’s animal books have just the right balance of information without being overwhelming and paired with great illustrations
• The Emperor lays an egg– The illustrations are similar to Caroline Arnold’s, it took me a moment to figure out why it was so familiar. I would use this with kids with a longer attention span because it has a fair amount of text.
• Pierre the Penguin– The first reason I like this is because it’s about African penguins, which I had known practically nothing about before reading this book. The second reason I like it is because it shows how much the people caring for the penguins care about them and want them to be doing well. Also at the end it has answers from Pam, the aquatic biologist who helped Pierre.
• Penguins!– If I have a Seymour Simon book further down in this pile, I will have the nonfiction children’s book trifecta. I continue to love her books.

Penguin fiction booklist

There are about a million penguin fiction books at the library. For the purposes of this list I weeded out most of the books that are solely penguins acting just like us. So Penguin’s first day of school and the penguins wear clothes and wait for a school bus. There is nothing wrong with books like that, but if I included all books like that my list would be 200 books long.

I’m not kidding, according to my library I could have over 200 penguin books. I also did not pick any penguin books like Diego rescues a penguin. I’m not trying for a cartoon tie-in book. Now, many good books were so popular they became a series. The original book for this unit, Tacky the Penguin became an entire series, that does not take away from how good it is.

Now to my penguin booklist.

• Oliver– a curious boy who wants to know all about the world and has a great imagination. His imagination leads him to a colony of penguins. Adorable, Oliver is rather like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, so his imagination is lots of fun.
• Penguin flies home– This is the second book in the Flight School series, this time they go on a field trip because Penguin is homesick. I love the idea of believing in him, but also struggle because penguins physically can’t fly, so I almost wish they’d helped Penguin to learn to love who he was, rather than encourage him to believe he wasn’t enough. So I have very mixed feelings on this series.
• Baby Penguins love their mama-This book would be great for a single mom, because it is a Mama Penguin, but no dad, and it is a positive portrayal of their family. It is clear Mama loves her baby penguins, and it even has her doing things that are good for them that are not fun, but it’s still good, and shows she gets tired. All in all, adorable, and I loved it.
• Turtle’s Penguin Day– I know I said I didn’t have books like this, but I was suckered in by the turtle. I love turtles, and so an excuse to have a turtle book snuck into my penguin booklist was too tempting to resist. It’s an adorable story of a turtle family that helps their son make a penguin costume before going to school and how he inspired everyone else to learn about penguins.
• I Am Pangoo the Penguin– this is similar to Turtle’s Penguin Day, only it is a young boy who dreams of becoming a penguin.
• Gordon and Tapir– An Odd Couple-inspired book, with Gordon (the penguin) who is a neatnik, rooming with Tapir (the tapir) who is a slob. This is a low text book, with plenty of pages with just pictures to talk about what’s going on, and I like the novel solution for two friends who are so different rooming together.

• Christopher Michel, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• David, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• ravas51, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons