Tacky the Penguin - Helen Lester and (illustrator) Lynn Munsinger

Published by Clarion Books/HarperCollins Publishers: New York, NY, 1988.

Tacky the Penguin was given to us by church friends when Ezekiel was born, and has been a favourite of ours ever since. I'm honestly surprised it has taken so long for me to add it to one of these lists, as it is always on the shortlist of ones to talk about.

Tacky lives in "an icy land" with his companions Goodly, Lovely, Angel, Neatly and Perfect. Whereas they are all 'good' penguins who dive gracefully, march neatly, and sing beautifully, Tacky "is an odd bird" who does not do any of these things in a traditional way. When hunters arrive, looking for penguins, Tacky proceeds to demonstrate how he behaves, which not only convinces the hunters that "this could not be the land of the pretty penguins" but ends up driving them away with their hands over their ears "leaving behind their maps and traps and rocks and locks, and not looking at all rough and tough."

The other penguins, who begin to understand that Tacky's quirks are helping save the day, join in on the final terrible singing, and give Tacky a big celebratory hug after their success. The story ends with "Tacky was an odd bird, but a nice one to have around."

A good moral, nice drawings, quirky humour, and very readable.

It is also a book that has inspired more than just reading, in our household. Ezekiel has a game he plays where he yells, "Ooh, hide! Hunters are coming!" Then the 'hunters' approach him and ask if he is a penguin, along with a series of questions based on the story. Finally Ezekiel sings loudly and badly and the hunters run away with their hands over their ears.

A sign of how engaging this book is. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Fathers of the Greek Church - Hans von Campenhausen

Image
Published by Adam and Charles Black Limited: London, 1963. Translated from German by LA Garrard. First published in German as 'Griechische Kirchenväter' in 1955. A 'proper' theological work by a 'proper' theologian, The Fathers of the Greek Church gives a brief biography of a number of the - wait for it - fathers of the Greek Church. Being written by a theologian, it is no surprise that the book focuses more on the theological writings of each individual than their actual biography, although this is still covered. I love church history, and what I enjoyed about  Fathers was learning more about the beliefs of a number of these individuals, or even (for a few) hearing about them at all! With early church history it is also interesting to track the development of concepts that modern believers take for granted. It is not that these concepts had to be invented - as Scripture alludes to them -   but it took some time for the understanding of these concepts to be soli...
Read more

My Top 5 Books of 2025

Image
This is the first time I have done a 'yearly' top 5 (although I did a ' Top 5 Top 5s ' previously, after my 5th book list), but it seems to fit with the year ending in a 5. Anyway, this is entirely subjective, and is an indication of where I currently sit in regards to these books. The list might even be different if I was asked on a different day. The following are not reviews of these books per se, but each one has been reviewed, and that review can be found by clicking on the title of the book in question. Also, these are ranked in the order that I read them, rather than specifically 1-5 or 5-1. That would take a while longer to sort out! The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. I will give this one the award for 'Best Audiobook of the Year' and 'Best Whodunnit of the Year'. I listened to this over the Summer holidays last year, and enjoyed it enough that I listened to the rest of the series in the same year. Twisty, humorous, a bit unpredictable (a...
Read more

Caging Skies - Christine Leunens

Image
Published by Vintage/Penguin Random House New Zealand: NZ, 2019 (2008). This novel is primarily known as the book that inspired Taika Waititi's Oscar winning film Jojo Rabbit. It is also fairly well known that the book is quite different from the movie, particularly in tone. Waititi's films generally have a light-hearted quirky humour to them, even when dealing with weighty themes, and the adaptation Jojo Rabbit also makes the choice of including "imaginary Hitler" as a major character, something that does not happen in the book. The closest we get to anything like that is when the main character, Johannes Betzler, is wrestling with his 'non-Nazi' thoughts, and narrates: "If it's true I'd tried to get the young woman off my mind, by that time I was also trying to get Adolf Hitler off it. His constant reproach about my shortcomings irked me: my incapability, indecorum, infidelity, all starting with in and ejecting me out of his good opinion. Wh...
Read more