Penguins Don’t Wear Sweaters!

Penguins Don’t Wear Sweaters! by Marikka Tamura

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Received: Publisher
Publication Date: January 16th, 2018
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Genres & Themes: Picture Book, Animals, Environmental Issues

BLURB:

You may have seen the cute pictures of penguins wearing sweaters–but did you know why they were wearing them? Debut author Marikka Tamura answers this question in this colorful, kid-friendly book that is told simply and charmingly…When the penguins become coated in an oil spill, many Big Boots arrive. The humans want to help the cold, greasy penguins, so they knit sweaters to keep them warm. The Big Boots mean well, but . . . penguins don’t wear sweaters! So after a good, soapy scrub, the penguins dive back into the deep blue sea, happily dressed only in their own penguin feathers.

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Don’t you love books that teach you something you never expected to learn?

Like the author says, this may be a fictional story, but there is truth underneath the cuteness and unexpectedness.

Who ever imagined penguins, or any other animals for that matter, wearing sweaters? That’s because they don’t and they shouldn’t.

But sometimes they have to, or so people believe. Some think that it is necessary to dress penguins up so that they can function normally after oil was spilled into the sea.

I want to applaud the author for the way she presented the issue in the story and the author note at the end. When I started this book, I thought it would be a cutesy fictional story with animals being personified by writers.

I don’t mind that exactly, because fiction requires creativity, but I was extremely surprised when I discovered that the sweaters were not included so that the reader can swoon.

In reality, sweaters can both help penguins and damage their health, which is made crystal clear in the author’s note. It turns out that the sweaters are more for the public’s eye than anything else. I’m glad this was alluded to in the story.

Very eye-opening. I love that this book was published and I love even more that it was published by Penguin Random House. That’s a pun right there.

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