Clive Penguin Learns to Fly, Sort Of

In a previous book we met Clive Penguin, moaning and dissatisfied with his chilly, boring life. In Clive Penguin Learns to Fly, Sort of, Clive objects to the sweeping tones of a documentary narrator who sets the scene with the ‘wondrous frozen south where majestic birds soar through the sky’ (almost impossible to read this without the tones of David Attenborough or Morgan Freeman): Clive calls them ‘Nothing special.’ Penguins, however, are ‘adventurous and up for anything and not at all jealous,’ and this pushes Clive to prove his worth and to want to learn to fly.

The influence of Jon Klassen’s style and humour is very evident from the colour palette to the challenge presented to the reader of seeing motives and success/failure. Here Jones and Sanders deliberately leave a lot unsaid, so that the reader notices what’s going on at a deep level: an Early Years educator would need to step back to allow the child-reader to spot, for example, Clive’s inexpert landing and to ponder what the seagull is doing among all the penguins.

Clever, well-paced and with a quiet humour, this is a book that deserves reading and rereading.