My Penguin Year (Dec 2021)

[Rachel]

I picked this book for a December read because December 1 is Antarctica Day! So a book about emperor penguins and Antarctica seemed like a natural choice. It's the story of photographer Lindsay McCrae and the year ish he spent in Atka Bay, Antarctica, filming emperor penguins. It's full of natural history, personal connections, mishaps, and details of life in Antarctica.

And I actually also just finished it, and I liked it! The writing style is a little amateur ish BUT he is a photographer not a writer and it was easy enough to connect to. Besides, penguins! It was interesting to read about the day to day life of penguins, and to hear his interpretation and reactions. And also heartbreaking sometimes because the life of an emperor penguin is definitely a hard one in some of the toughest weather conditions, trying to raise a fragile chick in the middle of winter. Honestly it's kind of amazing the species exists! Emperors are big, and the chicks are slow growing, and the whole process takes awhile. So they utilize the winter ice (which doesn't always exist in the summer) as their breeding ground. Ideally the chicks are full size and weather proofed enough to survive by the time the ice breaks up (if it does break up, depending on the colony location). It's just a really perilous and finely timed process and it's hard to think about what the future could look like if winter ice breaks up earlier, or freezes later, and what that could do to the emperor breeding strategy. Climate change sucks y'all (obviously).

Also now I want to watch the film that came out of this BBC expedition. Apparently it's in the BBC Dynasties series, and the episode is called Emperor. It's available on Amazon in the US (https://www.amazon.com/Dynasties/dp/B...) and on BBC's website if you're in the UK (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...)

I hope you enjoyed this book!! Let me know what you think :)