Penguins And Other Seabirds, by Matt Sewell

If March of the Penguins is a book (and movie) that put the attention of the viewer and reader squarely on the stars of the show, namely the Emperor penguins, this book is the opposite of that. This is a book whose title is somewhat misleading in that the vast majority of the book’s contents are not about penguins at all, but about the other seabirds, who don’t only live in the areas around where penguins do but indeed all over the world. The author of this book–who is presumably also the illustrator of the rather spare bird drawings that fill the pages of this work–appears to be of two minds concerning this book and his agendas work at cross-purposes. For one, he knows that penguins are immensely popular birds and that there are enough fans of penguins (like this reader, obviously, who picked up the book from a library shelf largely on its title and cover page full of penguins) to make the book profitable. Unfortunately, the author does not find penguins to be all that compelling on their own–he is not interested in exploring the depth of animals and their lives (which was the strength of March of the Penguins and what made it so compelling) but rather in providing sketches of birds as well as what they do and what other people think of them. The result is a book that ends up being a bit of a muddle.

This does not mean, though, that the book is exactly bad. Indeed, the book has pictures of penguins and other seabirds, which are themselves quite lovely, and that is enough to keep this book from being bad. Strangely, this book is the literary equivalent of a song like Chris Brown’s “Undecided” in that it samples clearly superior works (like the aforementioned March of the Penguins) while showing itself to be a bit of a mess, but the result is tolerable because what it is sampling is good enough on its own to make everything else at least tolerable. I am of the opinion, personally speaking, that a book should aspire to be more than tolerable, and should avoid the sort of false advertising that this book uses to gain readers who might not be interested in the obscure seabirds that make up the bulk of this book’s material but who are definitely interested in penguins. It is not as if this book has no penguins in it–it does–it just does not have enough penguins in it to make it worthy of being the main title of the book in large print with only that type of bird shown on the cover. There are layers to false advertising, after all, and this book descends down several stairwells but not all the way to the bottom, it must be admitted.

In terms of its contents, this book is a bit more than 125 pages long. It begins with a foreword by Brian Briggs and a short introduction by the writer/illustrator. After this the book discusses the following birds in order: emperor penguin, king penguin, brown skua, wandering albatross, storm petrel, northern giant petrel, sooty shearwater, adelie penguin, gentoo penguin, striated caracara, snowy sheathbill, imperial shag, arctic tern, chinstrap penguin, northern and southern rockhopper penguin, common loon, northern fulmar, parasitic jaeger, steller’s eider, king eider, macaroni penguin, royal penguin, harlequin duck, smew, crested auklet, dovekie, fiordland crested and snares penguin, erect-crested penguin, great auk, razorbill, guillemot, puffin, humboldt prenguin, african penguin, tufted puffin, rhinoceros auklet, great cormorant, gannet, magellanic and galapagos penguin, little penguin, blue-footed booby, australian pelican, magnificent frigatebird, black skimmer, yellow-eyed penguin, surf scoter, osprey, white-tailed sea eagle, white-flippered penguin, and gyrfalcon. Each of the animals is discussed in a consistent way, with a small drawing of the bird, the name of the bird in its common and Latin name, and a short description of the bird in question. This is followed by a section called spotting and jotting where all of the birds are shown in smaller sizes so that bird-watchers can check off if they have seen the birds, and ends with acknowledgments.