I’ll start with the rundown so you know if you need to read any further: The Penguin Lessons is based on a true story about Tom himself, who was a teacher from the UK at a boys college in Argentina in the 1970’s. While on vacation in Uruguay, he comes across a penguin stuck in an oil spill. He ends up bringing the Penguin back with him, and the book is about their life together. It also talks about the civil issues in Argentina during his time there.
I will admit, this book is totally out of the realm of stuff I usually read. It came up on StoryGraph (a reading app I use) and I was intrigued by the title, but didn’t read it right away, because if I’m being completely honest, didn’t want to wait the estimated 2-4 weeks for it to get here from Amazon, despite being a Prime member. I checked Barnes & Noble and it also had a long wait for delivery. I was also in the middle of a series by one of my favorite authors at the time, so I added it to my To Read list in the app (StoryGraph is great! If you like to read, I totally recommend checking it out) and forgot about it for a while. Once I finished my series, I was looking through my to read pile to see what sounded good and this came up again, so I decided to bite the bullet and order it despite the long shipping time. I finished a couple other books while I was waiting for it to come in, and started on it the day after I got it.
I thought The Penguin Lessons was really interesting. It has a little bit of history that I appreciate every once in a while, and I’m a sucker for pretty much anything with an animal. Who doesn’t love a penguin?! The boys in the college, and even Tom himself, seem to actually learn something from caring for the penguin together. I think my favorite thing about this book, though, I think is that the whole thing is just one big adventure. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5, highly recommend reading this book!
My boyfriend and I watched the movie on the plane when we went to Salt Lake City, and while it does have a couple small inaccuracies, it was really good! I thought they did a good job adding in the civil turmoil of Argentine at the time without making the movie boring.
