“The Poppers did it!” Nina said.
“That was a long time ago,” Mrs. Popper said. “And what happened in the end? They realized that the penguins needed to be in nature, and Mr. Popper did the right thing. He brought them back to the wild.”
“Mom?” Joel said.
“Yes, Joel?”
“The Penguin Pavilion was already closed when we got here, so I didn’t see it in action or anything, but I don’t think it sounds like it was a good place for penguins. They left two eggs behind! I don’t think they deserve to have Ernest and Mae back.”
Their mother sighed. “I’m inclined to agree. Also, I don’t know where they are. The Penguin Pavilion left in the middle of the night, without telling anyone where they were going. They owed a lot of money and just disappeared.”
Through with cuddles for the moment, Ernest thrashed until Mrs. Popper released him onto the table. He waddled over to the edge and sniffed the air, beak pointing toward the kitchen. He had clearly decided it was time to eat again. As if to make a point, he deposited a bright white smear of penguin poo on the tabletop.
“I’ll clean that up!” Joel said hurriedly.
As a parent, Mrs. Popper found a smear of poo was no big deal. Without missing a beat, she pulled a handkerchief out of her back pocket and wiped it away.
“Does that mean we’re not bringing them to the zoo? But you also said they couldn’t stay here. I guess I’m confused,” Nina said.
“I’m a little confused, too,” Mrs. Popper confessed. She’d always been very honest with her children. “These penguins belong in the wild, but we can’t exactly bring them to the local beach, can we? They need a cold wilderness.”
Joel thought for a long moment. “Every kid around here knows that Mr. Popper brought his penguins up to the Arctic, to Popper Island,” he said. “What if we brought these chicks up to live with them?”
Nina hooted. “That would be amazing!”
Never one to be left out, Mae gave an excited oork from where she was nestled in Nina’s arms.
“It’s fall break soon,” Nina said, petting Mae’s fuzzy head. “We could go then!”
“Just how do you kids imagine we’ll get all the way to the Arctic?” Mrs. Popper asked.
“Stillwater might be the fancier city,” Joel said, “but there’s one advantage to living in Hillport, if you catch my drift.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nina said.
“Port, Nina, port,” he said, pantomiming a ship rocking on the sea.
“Oh, yay!” Nina said. “I do like traveling by boat!”
THE POPPER FOUNDATION
IT WAS ONLY their second day of school, and yet the Popper children had already accomplished so much. They’d hatched two penguin chicks and come up with a plan for how to find them a home. Nina had even learned her spelling words—she wasn’t going to repeat that disaster again!
While the kids were in school, they left their chicks under the watchful eye of Mrs. Popper. As Ernest and Mae napped in the morning, Mrs. Popper went to the library to do some research of her own. She soon discovered that hatched birds don’t need any special heat sources in a temperate climate like Hillport’s—in fact their feathers insulated them so well that, until winter came, they’d need a way to cool down!
She went to the grocery store and bought some big bags of ice, which she dumped into a shallow tub in the corner of the kitchen. The penguins were smart creatures, she figured, and could decide how cold they wanted to be, using the ice as much as they saw fit. And that’s just what they did, hopping into the tub to play in the cubes for a while before joining Mrs. Popper in unpacking dishes (a task at which they were distinctly unhelpful), and then returning to the ice bath for some more cooling down.
As soon as the school day was over, the kids bounded home to see their chicks. Ernest and Mae greeted them with many cheeps and oorks. First the kids brought the chicks to the bathtub to swim laps. Then Joel lay on the floor, belly-down, and Ernest happily burrowed under his throat, his nesting position. Nina and Mae did the same. “Could you get our schoolbags for us, Mom?” Nina asked. “We’d better get used to doing our homework in this position.”
Mrs. Popper retrieved their bags from where they’d dropped them by the front door. “Once the penguins have had their snuggles and you’ve all had your afternoon snack, we’ll go down to the port to visit the Popper Foundation and see what they can do to help put our plan into action.”
“Really?” Joel said. “We’re going to ask them to get us to Popper Island? All the way in the Arctic?”
“That will be the best fall break ever,” Nina said.
“Can we bring Ernest and Mae to the port with us?” Joel asked once the snack was over.
“It does seem sad to leave them behind,” Mrs. Popper said. “Yes, we’ll bring them to the Popper Foundation, as long as you kids hold them tight.”
Ernest and Mae seemed to enjoy the car trip, turning their heads to and fro so they could peer out with one eye and then the other. Joel was learning that they didn’t face what they were looking at, usually, because of where their eyes were placed on their heads. Having an eye on either side allowed them to see all around them—which was probably very useful for avoiding seals in the water!
Once they’d parked at the harbor, Mrs. Popper led the kids to an address she’d written down on the back of an envelope. It was the office of the Popper Foundation. They knocked on a beautiful wooden door, carved with decorations of twelve regal-looking penguins.
The door buzzed open, and the Poppers filed into the foundation’s office.
“Sorry, busy today, come again another time,” the foundation representative said without looking up from his desk. He was
