> Skip to content
  • Published: 23 September 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241732069
  • Imprint: Viking Non Fiction
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

The Penguin Book of Penguins





A charming and beautifully illustrated book about the world’s most beloved birds, written by a leading scientist at the British Antarctic Survey and illustrated by his wife.

There’s something about penguins. Maybe it is their comical waddle, or the fact that their upright gait makes them look like humans. Whatever the reason, their cult following around the world is indisputable.

The Penguin Book of Penguins is a joyful, informative book that introduces us to the main species of penguin and the fascinating lives they lead: their history, evolution, behaviours and habitats.

As leading British Antarctic scientist Peter Fretwell shows, many of the distant places penguins inhabit face threats to their existence through human interaction and climate change. It’s time we learned what the future holds for these most beloved of birds.

  • Published: 23 September 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241732069
  • Imprint: Viking Non Fiction
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $40.00
Categories:

Praise for The Penguin Book of Penguins

The world's best-loved bird from the world's best-known publisher - what's not to like?!

Stephen Moss, author of The Bird Biography Series

Penguins are at once the most iconic of birds, and the least familiar, to those of us who have never visited the frozen south – this beautifully written and illustrated book is just what is needed to change the latter. Packed with information, from the purely scientific to the broadly cultural, it is admirably thorough but always utterly readable, and brings to vivid life an extraordinary avian family

Matt Merritt, Editor of Bird Watching

Simply wonderful! If you like feeling joy, you'll love this book. How have we managed without it?

Tristan Gooley, author of How to Read a Tree

Wedge-winged waddlers on land; sublime swimmers in southern seas, penguins are some of the most popular birds in all the world. This ace, accessible celebration of all the species - from Kings to Emperors, Gentoos to Macaroons - deftly mixes natural history and human history to explain both their enduring appeal and the many challenges they face

Jon Gower, author of Birdland

Always work with penguins. They are electrifyingly charismatic. When you run out of things to say or film, just cut to a penguin. The audience love them. It’s the Penguin Rule. Glad to see Penguin have embraced it in style

Dan Snow, author of On This Day in History

A lovely paean to penguins. Fretwell’s fascination for these birds is infectious and you come away from reading this warm, encyclopaedic book full of wonder for the penguins and the unique ways these birds have adapted to survive in some the most extreme places on the planet

James Macdonald Lockhart, author of Raptor