In 2018 I went on a bucket-list trip to Antarctica and saw penguins. Always a fan of the adorable little birds (I mean, come on, that waddle!), I’ve become sort of obsessed. This new-found penguin mania resulted in a Sphenisciformes-themed Christmas, including a hard copy of the delightful 1938 children’s tale, Mr. Popper’s Penguins.
I say delightful, but I might have easily said batshit crazy. I want whatever the Atwater couple was smoking when they wrote this. For context, Mr. Atwater died before publishing Mr. Popper’s Penguins, and his widow submitted it to a couple of publishers after his death. It was rejected, so she rewrote it a bit and resubmitted. I would pay good money to get my hands on a copy of the original. I need to know which half of that writing team was nuttier.
So the plot: Mr. Popper is a housepainter who loves to read about adventures even though he has never been out of his small town of Stillwater. He particularly loves tales about Antarctica. “Don’t you ever get tired of reading about the South Pole?” Mrs. Popper asks. “No, I don’t. Of course, I would much rather go there than read about it. But reading is the next best thing.”
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Mr. Popper goes on to tell his wife about the penguins in Antarctica, who are very intelligent by Mr. Popper’s estimation. He explains that when they want to catch shrimp, they crowd around an ice bank but don’t jump in, in case a predator is waiting to eat them. So they push each other around and wait until one falls in, to see whether it is safe for the rest. “Dear me,” Mrs. Popper comments, “They sound like pretty heathen birds.”
She’s not wrong.
It’s revealed that Mr. Popper has written to Admiral Drake of the Antarctic Expedition and told him how much he loves penguins. In response, Admiral Drake mails Mr. Popper a penguin. Via Air Express. On dry ice. But, the box has air holes punched in it so I’m sure it’s all up to USPS code. Mr. Popper names the bird Captain Cook and shows him the bathtub. Mr. Popper’s children, Bill and Janie, are excited, but whatever will Mrs. Popper say??? “. . .I never thought we’d have a penguin for a pet. . . .Still, he behaves pretty well, on the whole, and he is so nice and clean that perhaps he will be a good example to you and the children.”
The Popper family, apparently
As much as the family loves Captain Cook, he does cost a lot to take care of, and Mr. Popper doesn’t have any house-painting gigs until the Spring. This doesn’t stop him from spending all of his disposable income buying high-quality shrimp for the penguin while his kids eat nothing but beans and turning his refrigerator into a penguin suite. When Captain Cook takes ill, the family frets that he’s going to die. Fortunately, though, Mr. Popper has the idea to write to a large Aquarium since they, you know, might have experience raising an Antarctic penguin. The curator of the Aquarium writes back two days later and says, “You know what, we also have a sick female penguin here. Why don’t I just ship her out to you, a housepainter with no husbandry experience whatsoever, and hope it all works itself out?” And that’s how Greta, the female penguin, came to live with the Poppers and Captain Cook.
Captain Cook, by the way, is a male penguin. We know this because, at one point, a reporter asks Mr. Popper if the bird is a “he” or a “she.” Mr. Popper answers, “Well, I call it Captain Cook.” “That makes it a he,” the reporter responds. Mr. Popper reads every Antarctica book he can get his hands on but can’t be bothered picking up a book on biology.
So Greta and Captain Cook both get well, because it turns out they were just lonely. They even have babies! Greta lays TEN eggs, even though two is typical for a penguin. The author writes that this is probably because of the change in climate, because suddenly we’re concerned with realism.
Eventually Mrs. Popper has to sit Mr. Popper down and explain to him how money works. He hasn’t been working, and twelve penguins eat quite a bit. Mr. Popper is shocked, SHOCKED at the economics of the situation. Well, never mind, he has another idea! He’ll train the penguins to perform tricks and then rent them out for shows. In fact, this plan works out very well until a misunderstanding with one theater results in the penguins getting into a fight with a competing act’s seals, resulting in Popper and his tuxedoed charges getting thrown in prison.
In the original ending, Captain Cook shanks Popper to establish dominance over the other inmates.
Eventually the troupe is bailed out of jail by none other than Admiral Drake, who wants to take the penguins with him to the North Pole to establish a penguin population there. Never mind that 1) all the penguins are related and 2) introducing a non-native species into a new area results in destructive consequences pretty much 100% of the time. To be fair, this was 1938, and it’s a children’s story, so I’ll bypass the lessons about cane toads in Australia or boa constrictors in the Everglades. But WHY does Admiral Drake want to bring penguins to the North Pole? Because, he says, the men on that expedition are lonely because there are no penguins, I shit you not.
Attempts to get to know the polar bears proved more deadly.
So the penguins go off with Admiral Drake. But wait, there is one more surprise. Drake wants Mr. Popper to come, too! “Of course I can’t come,” Mr. Popper says, “I have a wife and children to care for!” Haha, just kidding! He says that sounds swell and tells Mrs. P. he’ll be back in a year or two. Does she mind? Of course not because, she says, “it will be much easier to keep the house tidy without a man sitting around all day.” Jesus, what kind of disgusting asshole is this guy Popper?
All’s well that ends well. Popper and Drake go to the North Pole where they form an incestuous penguin colony who live to have deformed penguin babies until all are eaten by polar bears. This was so awesome, I don’t ever want to read another children’s book written after 1940.
The end.
