This tells a story of Antarctica as seen through the eyes of an Adelie Penguin.
As a book intended for an adult readership, it is unusual because of LSD's use of an animal narrator to tell the story from its point of view. While such a perspective is a device often used in children's books, it is seldom used in books for a mature audience – in part, at least, because of the difficulty of making such a device convincing. And, while such an approach has sometimes been executed well in novels like Watership Down, it is even rarer for it to be attempted and pulled off successfully with a nonfiction book.
Published by Pavilion in the UK and Harcourt Brace in the USA, the book is also distinguished by the accompanying photographs: all taken by the author.
• winner PEN (NZ) Best First Book Award for Nonfiction – 1994
…not only striking but even audacious…Davis has risked sentimental failure and even derision…by letting a penguin tell the story himself…Davis imbues his dramatic device with total conviction so that his reader accepts the conceit as audiences accept the impossibilities of well-performed opera or ballet.
The Globe and Mail
(Toronto)
The spirit and soul of Penguin is
entwined with the factual information in this
first-person account so that it is rather like reading
a novel or an autobiography
American Bookseller “Pick of the
Lists”
The lyrical text tells an emotional
tale without sacrificing accuracy. While there is an
abundance of information included, the strength of this
book lies in [Davis’] ability to make the whole greater
than the sum of all the facts
School Library
Journal
Even those allergic to animal
narrators will be won over: far from cutesy-pie
sentimentality…this is as informative as it is handsome
Quote Unquote
