Ethel the Penguin by Ursula Dubosarsky, illustrated by Christopher Nielsen

Title: Ethel the Penguin

Author: Ursula Dubosarsky, illustrated by Christopher Nielsen

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Allen and Unwin

Published: 1^st October 2024

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 32

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: An irresistibly fun story about the joy of having a wild and reckless friend from the beloved and bestselling author of The Terrible Plop.

Ethel the Penguin’s in my class,
Though she doesn’t sit next to me.
Miss Ink likes Ethel to sit by herself,
She can be a bit lawless, you see.

Everyone needs a best friend like Ethel. She’s not afraid of teachers. She’s not afraid of heights. In fact, she’s totally WILD!

An exuberant picture book about the vicarious joy of an unruly friend from a bestselling and award-winning team.

~*~

Meet Ethel the Penguin, who loves to have fun and make mischief. She goes to school, but she never sits still, and is always making her parents worry. Ethel’s best friend is a human, who tells Ethel’s story. As the narrator tells Ethel’s story, we learn how fun, cheeky and naughty Ethel can be. This is Ursula Dubosarsky’s latest book, and she has created a fun and creative world that explores what it is like when you can’t sit still and want to have fun all the time. She’s that unruly animal friend that many children would love to have.

Animals are an important aspect of picture books. This use of anthropomorphism in picture books allows authors to give animals human characteristics, and therefore, portray them in a world that the young readers – and all readers in fact – can relate to.

In this book, Ethel’s role is quite silly, because the idea of a penguin going to school and living amongst humans is fantastical and silly. It’s something that would seem ridiculous and unbelievable in real life. Yet, in a picture book, it makes total sense. It fits. And the silliness that it represents in this book shows the joy and magic of a child’s imagination and how it works. Everyone wants a fun best friend in their lives, and that’s what Ethel represents. The wild and reckless friend that some people have.

She’s the friend who everyone laughs at, and who shows off because she’s getting that attention. Ethel is the one who longs for adventure beyond her small world. The person, or in this case, penguin, who wants to take risks or do things that she can’t really do on her own. In having her like this, Ursula has illustrated the wild and whacky elements of someone like Ethel. Its exuberance revels in its chaos that joyously celebrates the wild ones. The people who stand out, and who like Ethel, want to fly and do things that are a little bit out there. Or at least not what just fit in to please people. It brings friendship and whimsy to life through humans and animals, and shows that diverse friendships and becoming friends with people who are different from us is fun and interesting.

People and penguins like Ethel are the ones who can enrich our lives. They make them more interesting and show that the world has lots of different personalities that bring it to life. This is an important message for young children, as it shows them that it’s a pretty awesome thing to have a friend who is very different, and the joy that they can bring to their lives.