Penguin Huddle

 

Ross Montgomery and Sarah Warburton (illus)
Walker Books
Age 3-7

After a busy day playing, the penguins form a huddle to keep warm and cosy every night. One morning, after a freezing gale, they wake up to find themselves stuck together! This prompts a crazy adventure across the ocean to a distant city as they try to find a way to get unstuck.  

With lots of humour and lively illustrations, this is a story which definitely needs to be followed with a great big cuddle!

Watch a trailer

Share the story

Read aloud
Read the story aloud to your child taking time to look at the illustrations as well as the text. Follow the penguins’ route on the map.

Talk about the story
◼︎Choose one of the illustrations and talk about what you both see happening, for example in the city scenes.
◼︎Find the rhyming words eg ‘huddle muddle cuddle ..’
◼︎Talk about Pipsqueak and how he feels at the end of the story
◼︎Look at the end papers and title page and talk about all the things the penguins are doing.

Joan and her grandaughter read and play with Penguin Huddle

I looked at this book with my granddaughter Nancy, aged 4 years. She was familiar with the book and said her daddy had read it to her. I asked her what happened in the story and she became quite animated and told me that the penguins had got all stuck together when they cuddled because they became frozen. Nancy explained that where penguins lived it was very cold. She asked me if they lived in the Arctic or the South Pole? I said I didn’t know but maybe it told us in the book. We had a look in the book and it said penguins lived in the South Pole, so we found out where that was on her globe. She turned each page of the book explaining what was happening. We looked at the map page and Nancy asked me to read the words and she traced the trail of the penguins with her finger. Nancy told me that the penguins didn’t know how to unfreeze themselves, so they went to see Doctopus. He told them they were already unstuck because the ice had melted. The only problem was they missed their big cuddle said Nancy. We looked at the last page and Nancy remembered the words. She told me that all the animals had a great big cuddle, so of course we did too!

I showed Nancy the plastic toy penguins that I had put into water and frozen in thefreezer. We got a deep tray and put in the ice block with penguins in it. ‘How can we get them free?’ I asked. Nancy said we could stand them on the radiator, but she didn’t want them to defrost just yet. We made fake snow and Nancy added water to the powder. She asked for warm water so that she could thaw the penguins gradually. Nancy had great fun hiding polar bears and other snow animals in the snow. She made up stories of the polar bears trying to find food to eat. We added more ice to make ice bergs. Nancy’s little sister Flora was fascinated and wanted to join in too! Nancy said the polar bears can’t eat the penguins because they are all huddled together.

 

We talked about how animals often stayed in packs or groups as protection from predators. Nancy spent a long time making up stories about the penguins and other animals. We then made a cityscape with wooden bricks in another tray and Nancy took the frozen penguins there. When the ice eventually melted, Nancy was able to free the penguins. ‘Now they miss their big cuddle' said Nancy.

 

We decided to make a big map of the penguins adventures. Nancy helped me roll out a long strip of parcel paper. Using felt pens we drew the different places the penguins visited. I asked Nancy what she wanted me to draw, so I then drew the sea and mountains and Nancy drew the icebergs and the city. There was lots of discussion as we completed the map, and every so often we referred back to the book to check something or to see what something looked like.

Nancy thoroughly enjoyed reading this story again, and making up her own stories about the penguins adventures. We spent a long time looking at the illustrations this time and Nancy enjoyed telling me what each penguin was doing.

 

And best of all we were able to finish with a great big cuddle of our own!

Things to make and do

Make a huddle of penguins
Use some small cardboard tubes and decorate with paint, pens felt or paper to make a set of penguins. Stick them together to make a huddle. Make one a bit smaller to represent Pipsqueak. If you use coils of sticky tape for this, you could separate them too.

Play the story
Set up a snowy ‘small world’ in a large tray. Use cotton wool for snow, or perhaps fake snow. Add small figures to represent the creatures in the story and encourage your child to retell the beginning of the story with you. They could play imaginatively with the figures… take them skiing down the mountains, hunt for fish or play in the snow.

Make a town scape using building blocks, duplo or cardboard boxes. Add figures to represent the penguins, other creatures and traffic. Retell the rest of the story playing imaginatively in the city scape.

Experiment with ice
You could add ice cubes stacked on top of each other to make mountains for your Antarctic world; or place them in a circle to create a pool as they melt. Watch and talk about what happens to the ice as it melts. (See ‘Find out more’ for other ice experiments).

Draw a map
Draw a map of the penguins’ journey on a large piece of paper, such as wallpaper lining paper. Look back at the book for inspiration.

Make a book
Talk with your child about what they know about penguins and what they would like to find out. Use information books and internet searches to find answers to their questions. Make your child a small book from a few sheets of A4 paper folded in half to write the information they have found out and draw pictures or stick pictures in.

Find out more

Find out more about penguins including how they huddle to keep warm:

Find out more about author Ross Montgomery
Read another story by this author/illustrator collaboration Ten Delicious Teachers

Here are two other picture book stories by Ross Montgomery illustrated by David Litchfield:
Space Tortoise  and The Building Boy.

Read more stories about penguins:
◼︎Be Brave Little Penguin
◼︎Done Mummy Penguin by Chris Haughton
◼︎The Emperor’s Egg by Martin Jenkins

Find out more about ice
Make ice cubes with your child.
◼︎Try putting water into different shaped plastic containers or even a balloon.
◼︎Put them in the freezer. Look back a few hours later to see if they have frozen and watch what happens when you take them out of the freezer.
◼︎Place a plastic animal in a container of water You could even try freezing a huddle of plastic figures together perhaps holding them together with an elastic band before putting them in a freezer.
◼︎See how long your huddle of penguins takes to become unstuck or how long the ice takes to melt. Talk about what might make the ice melt more quickly, or more slowly. For example, placing the ice block near a radiator, near a window, inside a box, wrapped in a warm scarf etc.

Thank you to Joan Thurgar for her contributions to these activity ideas.