Mr. Popper's Penguins!!!

As long as I can remember, I've liked penguins.  (Those of you who have visited my house know I have a 'generous' collection of penguins.)  Possibly it stems from the time I was one of the baby penguins in an Adventure Theater Production of Mr. Popper's Penguins when I was about 3 years old:

 Real actors played Captain Cook and Greta, the parent penguins, but apparently there were several times the 10 baby penguins (usually children of cast members) were paraded across the stage.  That's my dad, who had a small part in the production as the manager of the theater where Mr. Popper's Penguins performed, posing with me.  The book became a favorite of mine early own, first when Dad read a chapter a night for my bedtime story, and later when I was able to read it on my own.

When I started teaching 4th grade, it was the first book I chose to read to my class.  Which reminds me of a story... :-)
Early in the school year I was making up lesson plans to leave for a substitute, and noted that after lunch she should read the next chapter in MPP.  I cautioned her not to let the kids talk her into reading more than one chapter (they always tried with me, not that it did them much good.)  Imagine my shock when I returned after my day's absence and read her note - the kids hadn't let her read the next chapter because they didn't want me to miss out on the story!!! Obviously they didn't realize that I'd read the book before (many times!!!), or that even if I hadn't, I could zoom through the chapter and catch up in a couple of minutes.  It was one of many wonderful moments in my teaching career that I'll never forget.
No surprise that I want to go see the movie (opening today!), even though I know it doesn't follow the book, and I doubt there are very many plot surprises.  But the penguin scenes (some live, some computer generated) will no doubt be worth the price of the ticket.