Mr. Poppers Penguins (book)
Mr. Popper's Penguins is a children's book by Richard and Florence Atwater published in 1938 .
content
The painter and house painter Mr. Popper is a dreamer: he spends the whole winter reading books about the two poles of the earth, he doesn't skip any radio programs or films on this subject. One day he is greeted personally on a radio broadcast from Antarctica by Admiral Drake, to whom he sent an enthusiastic letter after a film report about penguins . Drake announces a surprise for him, and a little later an approximately 75 cm tall penguin arrives at the painter's house by parcel post.
Mrs. Popper, who recently rejected pets such as dogs or cats because they cause too much mess and costs, is taken with the clean and cute animal, especially since Captain Cook, as the penguin is baptized, immediately starts, Collect all sorts of little things from the corners of the apartment that have escaped your broom or vacuum cleaner and build a nest from them in the refrigerator. The children Janie and Bill also have fun with the penguin. However, Mr. Popper gets into a conflict with the customer service representative of the refrigerator company because he demands that he drill air holes in the refrigerator door and attach a handle on the inside so that the penguin can independently visit and leave his domicile. The craftsman thinks Popper is crazy, flees the house and alerts the police. This inspects the penguin, declares it harmless and only advises Popper to inquire about any requirements and regulations for penguins in public traffic areas. His phone calls to all sorts of offices fail, however, because he is again regularly considered insane and kept connected until he gives up and draws the conclusion that there are apparently no such regulations at all and he can carry out his penguin as he is right appears: in a tailcoat and by means of a long leash. As a result, Captain Cook quickly became popular in the city, and he was responsible for further redesigning the house so that a snowy landscape with a swimming pool was created in the basement and the heating stove was in the living room.
The female Greta, who Popper receives from a zoo where the animal has only cared about, contributes to the penguin's further well-being. Greta immediately begins to lay eggs, ten of them, which is quite unusual for penguins, so that eight of them have to be artificially hatched and the Popper family finally lives with a group of twelve penguins. This finally drives Mrs. Popper, who administers the household money, into despair: She tells her husband that normally the money is hardly enough, since the painter only works from spring to autumn. The family therefore lives almost exclusively on cheap beans in winter, costly remodeling of the home is not financially possible. Since Mr. Popper refuses to eat the twelve penguins to solve the problem, he has to find another solution: He trains the cute animals to perform several tricks that correspond to their natural behavior to music. The penguins march in a parade to marching music, two of them perform a boxing match in which one is knocked out according to plan and the rest applauds, and as a conclusion, a number is built into the program in which the penguins ladders climb up and push each other down again.
With this program, the Poppers and their twelve penguins go on a ten-week winter tour of the United States. At first they are very successful, but when the temperatures rise in spring, the penguins become increasingly irritated. Worried and distracted, Mr. Popper finally takes his troop into a fake theater where a number with six seals is being performed. Contrary to his fears, the seals do not eat the penguins and the police and fire brigade, who were alerted in anticipation of the slaughter, have a great time putting their helmets and caps on the animals, but Mr. Popper is arrested and insisted because of this incident Brought to prison. Since his wife does not have the money to post a bail despite the good fee, his situation becomes very threatening. But in the end two rescuers appear: the theater manager offers him a new, lucrative contract, the scientist Drake suggests taking the penguins with him to the Arctic and trying to get the animals, which until now have been puzzlingly only at the South Pole, but not at the North Pole found were to settle there. After one night to think about it, Popper opts for this solution. Only on board the ship that is supposed to bring the twelve penguins to the North Pole does he find out that he is supposed to go on board himself and that his old dream of a trip to one of the polar ice caps will come true. Mrs. Popper agrees with a light heart because she has always believed that it is difficult to keep the house tidy when her husband is sitting there reading.
History of origin
The Atwater family saw a documentary film about Richard E. Byrd's expedition to Antarctica in 1932 . This film and one of his daughters' requests for books inspired Richard Atwater to write a text that he initially called Ork! sent to two publishers who refused the manuscript. After Richard Atwater suffered a stroke in 1934 , he could no longer write. His wife Florence, who worked as a teacher but also worked as a journalist, then rewrote the manuscript and made the beginning and end a little more realistic - originally Atwater had brought a penguin drawn with shaving foam on a mirror to life and integrated other fairytale motifs into the text . The rewritten version, illustrated by Robert Lawson, was released in 1938 under the title Mr. Popper's Penguins and became a bestseller .
Reception and awards
The book was very successful and has been translated into several languages. It received the Newbery Honor , among other things , was selected as the Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice in 1941, and was on the bestseller lists for children's books for decades. In Anita Silvey's work Children's Books and their Creators it is stated that only rarely has a book for the age group of seven to ten year olds withstood the onslaught of time for so long, especially one that does not belong to a larger series. Although full of absurd elements, including the basic theme of the penguin as a pet, the text manages to appear believable: "[...] everything is explained in a matter-of-fact fashion". "The book has an easy style, straight-faced and never coy, and the Atwaters never preach any lessons. The adventure and the characters [...] are what readers enjoy as much today as when the book was first published. “Apart from the title, the 2011 film has little in common with the book.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anita Silvey (Ed.): Children's Books and their Creators. Houghton Mifflin Juvenile Books, 1995, ISBN 0-395-65380-0 , pp. 35 f. (books.google.de)
- ↑ Anita Silvey (Ed.): Children's Books and their Creators. Houghton Mifflin Juvenile Books, 1995, ISBN 0-395-65380-0 , p. 36. (books.google.de)