Title: I Am Actually a Penguin
Contributors: Sean Taylor and
Kasia Matyjaszek
Type: Fiction
Genre: Children’s, Picture Book, Humour
Publisher: Templar Publishing
(Penguin Random House Canada)
Date published: September 4, 2018

A physical copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

When a little girl is given a penguin suit, she decides that living as a penguin is much more fun than just dressing as one. Penguins don’t ride the bus like people do, they don’t talk like people do, and they certainly don’t eat fish sticks like people do. Her family tells her, “You’re not actually a penguin.” But she knows that she ACTUALLY is. A hilarious new picture book about using your imagination — but also knowing that sometimes your costume needs to be washed!

I don’t remember having laughed this much at a children’s book! The humour used in I Am Actually a Penguin totally aligns with my sense of humour, and I enjoyed every single page. I wish there had been more pages, actually! I completely clicked with the book’s protagonist because I was the type of child who would dress up and want to pretend to be someone else for a while. I’m sure that if I had found a penguin suit when I was her age, I would have done the same thing as her (I mean, I pretended to be a spider once when I was little and filled a room with spiderwebs made out of yarn)!

The way that the little girl talks and interacts with her family is really funny. Her facial expressions also made the book hilarious, and I believe that the art style also worked really well with the tone and subject matter in this fun children’s book. Even now, while telling you about this book, I really want to pick it up again for a good laugh! I suppose, there is also a message in this book about being whatever you set your mind to, and I think that both children and adults can learn from that! I, therefore, recommend this book to readers of all ages (especially if you have a sense of humour like mine)!

Sean Taylor is an award-winning writer of stories. He grew up telling lies, and he got pretty good at it, so now he writes them into full-blown adventures for comic books, graphic novels, magazines, book anthol ogies and novels. He makes stuff up for money, and he writes it down for fun. He’s a lucky fellow that way. He’s best known for his work on the best-selling Gene Simmons Dominatrix comic book series from IDW Publishing and Simmons Comics Group. He has also written comics for TV properties such as the top-rated Oxygen Network series The Bad Girls Club. His other forays into fiction include such realms as steampunk, pulp, young adult, fantasy, super heroes, sci-fi, and even samurai frogs on horseback (seriously, don’t laugh). However, his favorite contribution to the world will be as the writer/editor who invented the genre and coined the term “Hookerpunk.”

Kasia Matyjaszek is an Edinburgh-based illustrator who graduated with a master’s degree in illustration from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2010.

THANK YOU FOR READING MY BOOK REVIEW! HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? WHAT DID YOU THINK? AND IF YOU HAVEN’T READ IT YET, DO YOU WANT TO, OR NOT? HOW COME? LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!