Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: Penguin

  • Pablo and Splash

    Pablo and Splash

    What a splendid Graphic Novel Pablo and Splash is for young children. It tells a strong, interesting story, has skilled graphics which add to the text greatly, and incidentally, passes on a great deal of information and fact. The penguins and dinosaurs involved ensure continued interest while time travel captivates the imagination.

    Pablo and Splash are penguins living the Antarctic. While the blizzards roar by, the pack huddle together for warmth. Splash is dissatisfied with life and wants a holiday somewhere warm and sunny. Pablo reminds him how lucky they are, with an unending supply of krill to eat and the games they can play.

    However, Splash is determined to find a way of escaping his home. He sets off, with Pablo following, and steps into a tunnel which sees him sliding all the way to an underground laboratory.

    There is a professor and a time machine and the two penguins, desperate to escape, use the time machine to locate their ideal holiday site. Sadly, their machine has taken them back to the era of dinosaurs. What a disaster! Cleverly the penguins evade capture, and eventually find home.

    This is a hugely interesting story and colourful book. The chapters make it easy to break up the reading and the text bubbles have only minimal sentences in them. Pablo and Splash is a happy, fun story, with interesting facts and maps at the back.

  • Where the Heart Is

    Where the Heart Is

    Where the Heart Is, is a most unusual Picture Book. Irma Gold was inspired by the true story of Joao and the Magellanic penguin who developed an amazing bond with each other. She has recognised the issues which brought the unlikely pair together, interweaving them into the story; an oil spill was the cause of the fisherman and the penguin meeting.

    Joao first found the penguin in 2011 when it was washed up on the beach of his small island. The penguin was exhausted and covered in oil from an oil spill. The fisherman took the penguin home and gently bathed him and fed him fish. Gradually, the penguin regained his strength until Joao felt he was strong enough to return to the sea. Sadly, he rowed the little visitor out to sea and put him in the ocean. When Joao returned home there was the penguin that he had named Dindim waiting for him.

    Dindim stayed for almost a year and then the call of the sea became too great. Joao’s “heart trembled”, as he watched his friend swim away, all the way to Patagonia 8,000 miles away. There is a happy ending to the story.

    Irma Gold chose Susannah Crispe to illustrate this book as the artist had been to the very island where this miracle happened. Her marvellous use of watercolours and digital collage create a gentleness and images of a great bond between human and animal. Issues of conservation and care of the environment are eloquently shown, and the end papers introduce humour and leave the reader with a smile. Where the Heart Is, is truly heart-warming and inspirational.

  • Migration Incredible Animal Journeys

    Migration Incredible Animal Journeys

    This is a reference book for students on how and why animals, fish and birds move from place to place. It is set out in a picture book format, making the information easy to access, and the illustrations reinforce the text with details. For ease of use, there is a contents page, and a map of the world at the end, showing all the migration patterns of creatures. Each animal or bird has a double page spread with a half a page of writing on one side and an opposite page with a full illustration covering both pages.

    Whales, Penguins, Terns, Butterflies, Dragonflies, Crabs and Turtles are just some of the creatures which are described, and their migration journeys examined. The book begins with an explanation of migration and describes why the creatures must move, and how many travel extensive distances to survive.

    The Emperor Penguin is the largest penguin in the world; we are shown and told how they travel in winter, leave the sea behind, and march one hundred kilometres inland to breed. Each finds its own place and the female then leaves one egg behind for the male to keep warm on his feet. The females return to the sea to go fishing. After four months, the female returns with fish.

    Swallows are an English bird which could not survive the cold winter. Once the cold sets in they become restless, they build up strength, then fly 10,000 km to Africa. Turtles can swim up to 1,000 km to get to the Ascension Island, where they lay their eggs at night. The Osprey is a large bird of prey that flies from Scotland to the west coast of Africa, to breed in the warmth. Each of these species survives by migrating many hundred of kilometres. It is fascinating to see their journeys and how they survive and flourish.

    The information in this book is delivered in small blocks of print, ideal for young students to skim and find the meaning and key words. It is ideal for research or for students with an interest in this area. There is a website given for follow up information.

    Although this is a wonderful reference book, it would have been easier to use if the colours of the illustrations were lighter, and the text font larger. On one page, the small dark print is over a dark colour page and not easy to read. It is still an accessible information book for the young.

     

     

  • Snow Penguin

    Snow Penguin

    Little Penguin is always looking for something new; a new adventure, a new experience, really anything will do that make his world of snow, and water seem a little different. He is very curious to find out what lies outside of his everyday world.

    So of course he sets out on an adventure, right at the edge of the ice, but unknown to him, his little piece of ice breaks off and he slowly floats into the unknown. An adventure was beginning to happen, and Little Penguin very soon found out what really was outside of his world.

    When a huge, mighty whale and her calf swim right by his little ice flow, he laughs at the cute baby whale. A school of wild orca’s go darting past but when a sea lions gets woken up he is not to happy. Little Penguin sees a mother sea lion hugging her cub, and then begins to understand that adventures are perhaps not all that wonderful, especially when you are on your own and it is beginning to get dark.

    Told in rhyming couplets, the words a have a wonderful, warm appeal in this delightful tale of adventure, tinged with caution, which so very many small children and their parents will enjoy, and in many cases, will relate to all too easily.

    Alison Brown has captured the very essence of Little Penguins adventures in her lavishly created illustrations, offering so many things that can be discovered on every page to introduce small children to a range of Antarctic inhabitants, as Little Penguin’s adventure continues.

    Snow Penguin is a delicious, feel good story, to warm the heart and one to be enjoyed time and time again.

  • All The Way Home

    All The Way Home

    If you are after a Christmas Picture Book for a young child this year, you cannot go past this book. It is a beautifully told story and totally engaging. The tale flows smoothly, as the father penguin caring for his egg, becomes lost. There are many uncertain adventures, but he NEVER lets go of the egg which carried “you” inside. The story is told to baby penguin by his father, and the whole time one is surrounded by the love and warmth generated, even though most of this adventure happens in the snow.

    There is a mixture of fantasy and fact here which is charming. This is a story told by father penguin to his baby at bedtime…. When mother penguin has laid her egg, she goes off to fish, while the father stays behind to keep the egg warm and safe. The dads become very, very hungry. This father was so hungry, standing in a dad huddle that he moved to the edge of the ice floe they were on. Suddenly a strong wind picked them up (dad and the egg) and they were taken far away.

    Here we move on to the scary adventure. Dad is confronted by many strange animals, both in the water and on land. They completely ignore him and refuse to give him any help to return home. The air is freezing and dad could feel the little one tapping in the shell. Suddenly along came a “Hairy sheltering thing” (reindeer) which tucked the pair safely between his warm antlers and took them to his home.

    Home just happens to be the house of Father Christmas who feeds dad, and watches as baby pops out of the shell. The feelings emerge as Dad greets the baby for the first time and wants to show you to mum, and to return to the Dad huddle. What a marvellous ending is in store!

    This beautifully told story has illustrations which enhance the text well, and with humour. The colours are vivid and reflect the freezing cold outside, and the warmth and cosiness of Father Christmas’s house. There are changes in text size for little readers to join in, “POP, and QUICK” are a few words enlarged. If you have no young children to share this story with, make sure you have a read yourself, and enjoy your day.