By Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell
Two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo build a nest together, try to hatch a rock, and are given an egg instead. It really happened.
At the penguin house in the Central Park Zoo, all the chinstrap penguins pair off, build nests of stones, and lay eggs. Roy and Silo pair off too. They bow to each other and sing to each other and swim together, and they build a nest of stones just like the others. Then they sit on it, and wait, and nothing happens, because what they have found and put in the nest is a rock. They keep sitting anyway. Mr. Gramzay, the keeper, has been watching. Another pair has laid two eggs and can only look after one, so he slips the spare egg into Roy and Silo's nest. They take turns keeping it warm for days. It cracks. Tango comes out. Henry Cole draws the whole thing in soft watercolor, and the last note tells you that Roy, Silo, and Tango were real penguins in a real zoo.
The fit here is real but sideways: nobody in this book says the word adoption, and it is penguins. What it gives an adopted child is the sequence, seen from outside and in soft watercolor. Two who wanted a chick. An egg that came from another pair who couldn't look after it. A grown-up who made the match on purpose. A family that ends up being a family. Because it's true, and because Roy and Silo are just doing what all the other penguins are doing, the whole thing arrives without a single lesson attached. And the wait is the best part to read aloud, because the wait is what actually makes them parents.