Fiction Readers: The Lonely Penguin's Blog

The Lonely Penguin’s Blog is a humorous and fictional animal fantasy story about a penguin who writes a blog. Palaki, an emperor penguin, blogs about his journey heading south. He describes what he is looking for to know he is on the right route home. He ends up getting lost and in New Zealand! Palaki gets sick and a zoo takes him. He eventually announces when he is released back into the wild. The story is narrated with illustrations, blog posts, illustrative text, titles, dates, and a map.

The Lonely Penguin’s Blog is a simple narrative story designed as a series of blog posts. Illustrations match the text. Draw students’ attention to the visual features including the illustrative text (italics) and map as well as the layout and design of a blog. Opportunities arise to discuss the purpose and structure of a blog and the information included in a blog. 

Readers develop vocabulary such as verbs (swallowing) and adjectives (thirsty). Focus on suffixes and base words (wonderful). Opportunities arise to discuss apostrophes within contractions (I’ve), capital letters at the beginning of sentences and names (Wellington), question marks, exclamation marks, and commas. 

This title is from the Fiction Readers series from Teacher Created Materials. Stimulate the imagination and promote creative thinking through real-world themes captured in entertaining stories.