A review by mossflower_bibliophile
Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater, Florence Atwater

3.0

I finished reading this out loud to 4 year old today. He told me that he loved it because he thought that the penguins did lots of funny things. I found the book well written and a decent story-line, but it has certainly aged. The relationships between the family members reflect older times (I hope my kids would care if I randomly decided to leave on a ship for a couple years!). The pace is a little sluggish, so my preschooler wasn't as excited to sit down to read it as he has been with other books...but he still enjoyed it over-all. I tried not to be terribly annoyed that no one seemed to know what a penguin was, that it was made out to be acceptable to take a wild animal home as a pet, or that they were going to introduce a new species to an area where they should not reside...it's just a story after all. However, the conservation biologist in me couldn't resist the occasional eye-roll. The penguins were lovable, and it was fun imagining what it would be like to have a family of penguins. It has inspired my son to waddle around and pretend to be a penguin.