Cool Off with 6 Funny, Philosophical Penguin Picture Books

Penguin Problems, by Jory John & Lane Smith
The star of this funny book is a penguin having an existential crisis about being a penguin—his beak is cold, he can’t stand the squawking coming from his colony, he hates that he looks the same as everyone else and laments that the ocean is too salty. He directs plenty of sarcasm toward his would-be predators: “Oh, great. A leopard seal.” When he calls out to the look-alike penguin he guesses is his mom, she replies, “I literally have no idea who you are.” But then he meets a wise, philosophical walrus, who helps him look on the bright side of things…for a little while.

A Penguin Story, by Antoinette Portis
Here’s another charming story of a penguin displeased by her circumstances. Edna is tired of everything in her environment being black, white, or blue. “There must be something else,” she thinks. She heads across Antarctica looking for that “something else,” and finds it in the color orange: the bright orange gear, tent, and airplane of some visiting scientists. As poet Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, “One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” And so it is with Edna. Having attained orange, she wonders, “What else could there be?”

Lost and Found, by Oliver Jeffers
While some picture book authors use penguins to inquire about the nature of being, the flightless bird inspires others to ponder friendship. In this story, a boy opens his door one day to find a penguin. “The penguin looked sad and the boy thought it must be lost,” Jeffers writes. So the boy embarks on a quest to take the penguin home. And, as is often the case with quests, he discovers what he and the penguin were looking for was available to them the whole time: companionship.

Penguin and Pinecone: A Friendship Story, by Salina Yoon
While Lost and Found illustrates the importance of keeping friends near, this sweet book by Salina Yoon suggests that sometimes we must let our friends go so they can realize their full potential. Penguin is delighted when he discovers a pinecone, “a curious object” whose identity is a mystery to him. They become fast friends, but then one day Penguin’s grandpa tells him that the pinecone needs to live in the forest to thrive—he can’t grow in the ice and snow. So Penguin takes pinecone home, leaves him reluctantly, and one day returns to find him transformed.

Pierre the Penguin: A True Story, by Jean Marzollo and Laura Regan
This book demonstrates that while fictional penguins can teach us a lot about life, real penguins can teach us just as much. Pierre is an African penguin living at the California Academy of Sciences, when Pam, an aquatic biologist, notices he is losing all his feathers. Pierre shivers, is too cold to go in the water, and is subject to bullying as fierce as any you’d see on a playground. Pam comes up with the ingenious solution of making him a tiny wetsuit. The happy conclusion of this book just might inspire a child who’s feeling bullied to reach out for help from an adult—or a scientist.

Tacky Goes to Camp, by Helen Lester and Lynn Munsinger
Okay, have we had enough penguin-based life lessons? Good. Because Tacky the Penguin is not interested in teaching us anything. He’s here to make us laugh. In Helen Lester’s most recent book about the wild-and-crazy penguin, Tacky goes with his perfect penguin friends to Camp Whoopihaha in Nice Icey Land. He’s not supposed to bring food into his tent—everybody knows that!—but Tacky being Tacky, he attracts a polar bear with his tent-side smorgasbord. Thankfully, just by being himself, Tacky manages to shoo the bear away.