One of the last things my boys and I did this summer was read Richard Atwater’s Mr. Popper’s Penguins together. While this is an old classic, it still stands as an entertaining middle grade novel about a poor family that gets a slew of penguins, makes some money on the show stage, and are changed somewhat in the process.
My kids laughed so hard in this book, simply enjoying the adventures of a family with penguins. The book proved to me that there can be silly books written strictly for entertainment that are worth just as much to kids as the books with an emotional component that will hook them forever.
Here are three things I enjoyed most about this book:
1. The ridiculousness. Mr. Popper’s Penguins was funny in places, and my kids couldn’t wait to hear the next chapter and what would happen to the penguins and the Popper family.
2. The events. The family wasn’t changed in any big and earth-shattering way; they just experienced event after event, adding up to an overall entertaining tale.
3. The choice. At the end of the book the Poppers face the choice between becoming rich and doing what was best for the penguins. I won’t tell you what they decided to say, but I’ll just say it was a wonderful moral dilemma to put before my children, who all guessed correctly and said they would do the same thing.
Mr. Popper’s Penguins is best read aloud, with your entire family.
The book mentioned above has an affiliate link attached to it, which means I’ll get a small kick-back if you click on it and purchase. But I only recommend books I enjoy reading myself. Actually, I don’t even talk about books I didn’t enjoy. I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them. (But if you’re curious whether I’ve read something and what I thought about it, don’t hesitate to ask.)
