Book Descriptions
for Bye, Penguin! by Seou Lee
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
A small penguin is separated from its community when the ice on which it's standing breaks away. The penguin floats on its bit of ice under Southern Lights, through ice caves, past the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, the Statue of Liberty, and the Sydney Opera House. Throughout the journey, the ice chunk gets smaller and smaller. Just in time, the penguin meets a brown-skinned child with a surfboard. A few pages later the penguin triumphantly returns home on the surfboard, while far away the child holds the remaining chunk of ice. The nearly wordless story, which opens with a "Craaaack Snick!" as the penguin's ice raft breaks away, communicates so much emotion through the expressions on the penguins' faces and the simplicity of the illustrator's understated style. There's a subdued message about climate change in that breakaway ice for those who look for it, but the pleasure of this fantastical journey is accessible to all. (Ages 3-7)
CCBC Choices 2021. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2021. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
You'd think that a penguin stranded on an ever-smaller block of ice, on a trip around the world wouldn't be so...FUN! But it is! There's our fearless penguin passing the gondolas of Venice...there's penguin floating by the Sydney Opera House! From the Aurora Borealis to a hilarious encounter with a surfer in Hawaii, this is a wordless journey that truly FROLICKS. In fact, the adventures are so amusing that most readers will barely register the nod to global warming until it's slipped right in on the breath of a laugh.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.