MY PENGUIN OSBERT IN LOVE
by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel & illustrated by H.B. Lewis
The child-and-penguin duo introduced in the fresh and funny My Penguin Osbert (2004) returns for a pallid new adventure. When Osbert brings all his new penguin friends from the zoo to the unnamed narrator’s house, it’s to conscript him into taking them to a South Pole viewing of the Southern lights—at which Osbert loses his heart to the lovely Aurora Australis, who invited them. Kimmel and Lewis employ the same combination of understated text against sweetly ironic watercolor-and-pastel illustrations, but even though this story goes all the way to Antarctica and back, it hasn’t the emotional or humorous legs of its predecessor—a shame. (Picture book. 6-9)