The Popper Penguin Rescue Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Illustrations by Jim Madsen

  Cover art by Jim Madsen.

  Cover design by Angelie Yap. Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First Edition: October 2020

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Schrefer, Eliot, 1978– author. | Madsen, Jim, 1964– illustrator. | Atwater, Richard. Mr. Popper’s penguins.

  Title: The Popper penguin rescue / by Eliot Schrefer; illustrated by Jim Madsen.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2020. | “Inspired by the Newbery Honor Book Mr. Popper’s Penguin by Richard and Florence Atwater.” | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Summary: Long after Mr. Popper found his famous penguins a proper home, his distant relatives, Nina and Joel, move to a new house with their mother and find mysterious eggs in the basement.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020005068 | ISBN 9780316495424 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316495417 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316495448 (ebook other)

  Subjects: CYAC: Penguins—Fiction. | Single-parent families—Fiction. | Moving, Household—Fiction. | Arctic regions—Fiction. | Humorous stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S37845 Pop 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005068

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-49542-4 (hardcover), 978-0-316-49541-7 (ebook)

  E3-20200905-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE: Stillwater

  CHAPTER 1: Hillport

  CHAPTER 2: Nina and Joel Build a Nest

  CHAPTER 3: Oork!

  CHAPTER 4: A Pop Quiz

  CHAPTER 5: Ernest and Mae

  CHAPTER 6: The Way of All Goldfish

  CHAPTER 7: Grounded?

  CHAPTER 8: The Popper Foundation

  CHAPTER 9: Leaving Hillport

  CHAPTER 10: The Journey Begins

  CHAPTER 11: Run Aground!

  CHAPTER 12: The Popper Penguins

  CHAPTER 13: Bleak Prospects

  CHAPTER 14: Show and Tell

  CHAPTER 15: A Gathering Storm

  CHAPTER 16: Strange Bedfellows

  CHAPTER 17: The Huddle

  CHAPTER 18: A New Destination

  CHAPTER 19: The Popper Penguins Perform an Encore

  CHAPTER 20: Growing Pains

  CHAPTER 21: Homecoming

  CHAPTER 22: Farewell, Dr. Drake

  Acknowledgments

  To the memory of Florence and Richard Atwater and their children, Doris Atwater and Carroll Atwater Bishop.

  Our grandparents’ book, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, has delighted children for decades. It has been translated into numerous languages and has inspired theatrical, musical, and film adaptations. Now it has inspired a new book, The Popper Penguin Rescue. We hope that you enjoy it.

  —Kate and Alec Bishop

  STILLWATER

  EACH YEAR, STILLWATER held the Popper parade, when everyone would gather to acknowledge the city’s most famous residents. Grown-ups took the day off work. No children had to go to classes.

  There was good reason to celebrate the Poppers. Mr. Popper had once been an ordinary house painter. But he’d fallen in love with penguins and let his favorite explorer know. Then, one September thirtieth, he’d received a penguin, sent express mail straight from the Antarctic by Admiral Drake himself!

  That now-famous penguin, Captain Cook, was soon followed by another, Greta. Once there were a male and female penguin in the house, there were eggs and chicks. The Poppers soon hosted twelve penguins and became very famous after they started up a traveling theatrical act.

  From then on, September thirtieth was Stillwater’s Popper parade day. The local children would take the bus to school as usual, but they’d cluster in the schoolyard instead of going to classes. There, they donned their best penguin costumes, which they had worked hard on in art class. Some looked very accurate. Some looked more like skunks or hamsters.

  The adults in the town arrived next, dressed like the Poppers or the other characters from the family’s adventure—Mrs. Callahan, Mr. Greenbaum, even Admiral Drake himself! Everyone would have great fun wearing elegant clothes from the 1930s. Then, with the high school marching band blaring away, they all proceeded around town. The kids went first, doing their best impressions of a penguin waddle. The group trundled past the former Popper home at 432 Proudfoot Avenue, past the barber shop and the Palace Theater. The procession finished at the great city square, where news crews came from all over the country to film the merriment.

  In the square were copper statues of all twelve Popper Penguins: Captain Cook, Greta, Columbus, Victoria, Nelson, Jenny, Magellan, Adelina, Scott, Isabella, Ferdinand, and Louisa. In the center of those birds were statues of the Poppers and their children. It made quite an image for the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Confetti and ribbons, penguins and Poppers! It was the highlight of every year in Stillwater.

  Across the river, in Hillport, it was quite a different story.

  HILLPORT

  AFTER PASSING THROUGH the neat boulevards of Stillwater, the moving truck rumbled past the low houses and blinking billboards of Hillport. The town had every kind of penguin attraction imaginable. There were penguin petting zoos, penguin gift shops, even a penguin waterslide. The truck eventually came to a stop in front of a sagging building. Light bulbs traced the words Penguin Pavilion out front, but not a single bulb was lit, despite the dark evening. The front door of the broken-down petting zoo was boarded up, and the electricity was shut off.

  “We’re going to live here, Mom?” Joel asked, rubbing the car window with his sleeve so he could see better. He didn’t mean his words to sound as negative as they did.

  “Is there even any power?” asked his little sister, Nina, from the middle seat of the moving truck.

  “I have a call in to the electric company,” their mother said. “They’ll have it back on as soon as they can. Come on, kids, I need you to be flexible and understanding for a few days.”

  “Are there really going to be penguins living inside?” Nina asked, climbing over Joel so she could press her face against the fogged side window. She wiped it with her hand, but her breath immediately fogged it right back up. Joel could see what had caught her attention. Wood cutouts of penguins wearing overalls danced along the outside of the house. A sign below said, PENGUIN VISITS: $5. (PETTING EXTRA. MARKET PRICING.)

  “No penguins here anymore,” their mother sai
d, turning off the truck before rummaging through her bag. Her hand emerged with a battered envelope, which she shook until a single tarnished key dropped into her palm. “Are you ready to go check out our new home?”

  “I wish there really were penguins inside,” Nina grumbled. “That would make this move worth it.”

  Joel rubbed the top of her head. “I hear they’re actually smelly and cranky. Maybe it’s better that we just see them at the zoo, behind glass.”

  “They wouldn’t be smelly and cranky to me,” Nina protested. “We’d be friends!”

  The kids followed their mother along the house’s front path. Fading signs promised PENGUIN FEED: $2 and PENGUIN PORTRAITS: 4 FOR $4. “This was a penguin petting zoo,” their mother explained. “The owners had hoped to make some money from the crowds that came to Stillwater each year to celebrate the Popper story. It’s been a very long time since the original Popper Penguins lived in Stillwater, though, and even fewer people come to Hillport each year. The bank foreclosed the Penguin Pavilion, which is why I was able to afford it.”

  “And the Popper Penguins are part of your history, too, right?” Joel asked. “Which is why we have Popper as our last name?”

  “In a way,” she said. “But I’m a very distant relation. I never lived in Stillwater or Hillport, so this is as new to me as it is to you kids.”

  “What does ‘foreclosed’ mean?” Nina whispered to Joel, while their mother worked to fit the key into the lock.

  “I think it means it was closed four times already,” Joel said wisely. “That’s what makes it cheap enough for Mom to afford.”

  The front door creaked open. As soon as it did, Nina raced past, her voice reverberating through the halls. “I call this bedroom. No, wait, I call this one instead! You can have that first one!”

  Joel didn’t much care which room he got. He hung back near his mother, worried by how drawn she looked. It had been a very long drive through bad weather. “Here, Mom,” he said, taking her heavy handbag from her and placing it on top of the mantelpiece. “Should I go start unpacking the truck?”

  “We can do all that tomorrow,” his mom said. She patted the bandanna she always wore over her hair, spattered with paints from her latest canvas. She was a wonderful painter, though she could never seem to settle on any one subject. Some of the tiredness lifted from her eyes. “Nina has the right idea. Let’s go explore the house!”

  Then she was off, tracking down Nina. Joel closed the front door, made sure the dead bolt was secure, then ran upstairs to join his mother and sister.

  The house might have been cheap, but there was a reason. Its previous owners kept penguins here (which was, of course, awesome), but they had clearly not been into housekeeping. Even in the dim reflected light from the streetlamps outside, Joel could see the grime on the walls, and dust and wrappers piled up in the corners. His mother stood in the middle of a cramped kitchen, already working on the faucet, which was spraying out water. When she saw Joel, she gave a tight smile. “At least we know we have running water! Don’t worry, we’ll get this place cleaned up in no time.”

  “I’m sure we will, Mom,” Joel said, nodding.

  “Okay, this one is definitely my room—no, wait, this one!” Nina yelled from upstairs. “There’s so many options!”

  “You’d better go pick your own bedroom before your sister takes all of them,” Mrs. Popper said.

  Joel nodded and headed upstairs.

  It was a quick choice. Joel let Nina pick whichever room made her happy and then selected the one next door to make life simple. “Come on, it’s late and we’ve got a long day tomorrow,” he said to his little sister. “We should go down and unpack our sheets and toothbrushes, at least.”

  Nina bounded down the stairs. “Ooh, look, a basement!”

  “Let’s go unpack, Nina!” Joel called down into the dark. “We can explore the basement tomorrow.”

  “You have to see this!” she called up. “Amazing! Wow! Bring a flashlight!”

  Grumbling, Joel unclipped the flashlight from his belt (he was always prepared for emergencies) and headed down the creaking stairs. There were signs hanging from the ceiling above each step:

  Get ready to pet!

  Bundle up!

  Penguin Pavilion main attraction!

  Come meet penguins just like Captain Cook and Greta!

  Buy your tickets upstairs!

  “This must be where they kept the penguins,” he called to his sister as he stepped off the stairs and onto the cool, dank floor.

  “Yes, definitely!” Nina said. “Let’s take a look around.”

  Joel shone the flashlight around the walls. Ice caps and glaciers were painted on each surface, with rough representations of penguins and polar bears playing together in the distance. “Polar bears live in the Arctic,” he said to Nina, “and penguins are in the Antarctic. Totally different poles. And they definitely wouldn’t play together. Or wear these silly Santa hats.”

  “They’re just paintings,” Nina said, poking around the edges of the room. “I wish the penguins were still here. I’ve never met a penguin before.”

  Joel sniffed. “It still smells like birds. And old fish.”

  Nina took a big sniff, too. “I like the smell. Come here and shine the light on these gigant-o machines!”

  Along one wall were what looked like big air conditioners. “These are probably how they kept the room cold.”

  “Do you think they turn on?” Nina asked.

  “Of course they do. But we don’t have any power,” Joel replied, crossing his arms. “And we don’t need to freeze this room if there are no penguins in it anymore. Electricity is expensive.”

  Nina disappeared around the back of one of the cooling devices. “There’s a space back here. I can almost fit—wait, what’s that? Whoa, I almost crushed it!”

  “Crushed what?” Joel asked, shining the flashlight on his sister. He couldn’t see what she’d found, though. Her body was casting a shadow over it.

  “Hold on—there’s another one!” Nina turned around, with something in each hand.

  “What are those?” Joel asked.

  She worked her way out from behind the coolers. She was speechless as she lifted her hands up into the light.

  It was very unusual for Nina to be speechless.

  But in an instant, Joel could see why.

  Cradled in each hand was an egg. They were grayish and faintly speckled and too big to be chicken eggs.

  They had to be penguin eggs.

  NINA AND JOEL BUILD A NEST

  “KIDS?” MRS. POPPER asked from the top of the basement stairs. “What’s going on down there?”

  “Nothing!” Joel called up brightly. He whispered furiously in Nina’s ear. “Put those eggs back.”

  “Why?” Nina protested. “We’re going to love these eggs and maybe sit on them and hatch them, and then we’ll have penguins!”

  “Mom has enough to trouble her without also worrying about the penguin eggs in our basement,” Joel whispered.

  “Are you kidding? Mom will be excited, too! She loves animals.”

  “She might make us send them off to whatever zoo the Penguin Pavilion birds wound up in,” Joel said. “We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

  That quieted Nina down. She shook her head soberly.

  To be honest, Joel wasn’t sure what they should do next. He just knew he didn’t like any unexpected complications in his life, and this was definitely an unexpected complication. At least these penguin eggs would probably never hatch. In any case, a few more hours in a corner of the basement wouldn’t change their fate. He’d debate about what they should do overnight and then come up with a plan in the morning when he was thinking more clearly.

  “Kids?” their mom called down. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, fine!” Nina called as she carefully returned the eggs to their hiding place. She gave Joel a thumbs-up and winked. Only she hadn’t really learned how to wink yet, so it was m
ore like an exaggerated eye scrunch.

  Joel didn’t sleep much that night. He lay in his strange new bed, looking out at the orange streetlight that shone through the broken slatted blinds of his room, and considered his options.

  By morning, he was pretty sure he had a workable plan.

  At breakfast, he and Nina sat in a corner of the kitchen, cereal bowls in their laps (they hadn’t unpacked any tables and chairs yet). Their mother was in the bathroom, trying to unclog the toilet. It wasn’t going well—they kept hearing grunts and strange gurgling sounds. Joel didn’t dare peek into the bathroom to see what was going on.

  Gloop. Joel coughed. “Mom, Nina and I have to go to our new school on Monday, as you, um, as you know, of course, but did you know they sent a letter to our old house about what we needed to read for class?” Glork. “Well, they did, and I memorized it, so, um, I was wondering if Nina and I could go to the library we passed on the way in and get out the books we need. It’s just a couple of blocks, and we’ll be right back, you’ll barely miss us? I’m sure the librarian will be nice and give us a card.” Glup.

  “Sure,” their mother called absently. Glip. “You’re old enough. I’ll have this fixed by the time you’re back.” Glook.

  Joel and Nina were already halfway out the front door, pulling their shoes and jackets on. They dressed as they ran, hopping until they had all four shoes on all four feet. “We’re looking up how to care for penguin eggs, aren’t we?” Nina said excitedly.

  Joel nodded and held open the library door for his sister. Once they were inside, Joel and Nina went straight back to the reference section, avoiding the curious gaze of the librarian. They didn’t want anyone asking difficult questions.

  “Penguins are 598.47,” Joel said. “I hope that’s a low shelf.”

  “How do you know the Dewey Decimal number for penguins?” Nina asked.

  “I remember stuff, I don’t know,” Joel said. “Here we go!”

  Joel sat on the floor, legs crossed, and pulled books into his lap. “Okay, eggs in the index, page twelve, here we go. Incubation temperature is 96.5 degrees.”