By Julie

You’ll find the fairy penguin, or little blue penguin, making a splash in the sub-Antarctic regions south of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Living up to their name, these compact penguins are only 16 to 17 inches tall and weigh but two pounds! They are the smallest penguins. Fairy penguins have indigo-blue and slate-gray backs, heads, and flippers. Their bellies and chests are white. They have tiny heads with two pinprick earholes and bigger bodies. Their torpedolike shape helps them swim through the water rapidly. These penguins are excelent swimmers. Their scientific name, Eudyptula, means ‘good little diver’ in Greek! They spend most of the day at sea snagging small fish, miniature squid and octopi, and tiny crustaceans. They forage for food in groups called “rafts”. They return to their nests, burrows or rock crevices lined with plant material, at the end of the day. Did you know that fairy penguins reuse the same nest every year? They usually live for about seven years. They have a population of 500,000 pairs, or 1,000,000 birds! My last interesting fact about these penguins is their wide sound range: they can bark, bleat, bray, cackle, growl, hiss, quack, scream, sneeze, trumpet, and even moo and meow! As you can clearly see, these itsy-bitsy penguins are definently small but mighty!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.

A loud, braying call pierces the air. Å donkey? It could be a jackass penguin! Jackass penguins are penguins of many names. Some call them blackfoot penguins, because of their webbed feet with dark hues. Another name is the jackass penguin, because of their cry similar to a donkey or jackass. Their last name is the African penguin, because they live on islands off the coast of southern Africa. They nest in burrows dug under rocks or the small amount of vegetation. They’re known to munch on tiny fish like sardines, suncord, and anchovies. They also like squid and crustaceans. They can eat a pound of food each day! Blackfoot penguins are of average penguin size, about two feet tall. That is tall enough to peer over the end of the average piano bench. They have light bellies and black backs, flippers, and heads. A white stripe surrounds their cheeks. Pink featherless patches lay above their eyes. A horseshoe-shaped band crosses their chests. They also have black spots on their chests that are unique to every penguin like human fingerprints! African penguins have a population on about 180,000 birds, one of the smallest penguin species! They are recognized as “vulnerable” because of oil spills and habitat loss. Possibly due to this, jackass penguins are some of the least-studied penguin species. Watching this sparse species of penguins dive in and out of the waves searching for a meal would be nothing less than a great pleasure.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.

I was a plain girl. Limp brown hair framed my face, the color of peachy silly putty, and milk-chocolate eyes. At school and most of the time at home, I was just what I looked, like: ordinary. But if you caught me alone in a room with a piano, I am not modest enough to refrain from saying that you would never want to leave. Music flowed from the piano, domesticated and tamed by my fingertips as I stroked, note by note. As much as I loved the works of Mozart and Bach, I mostly enjoyed writing my own music. I could spend hours on end replaying, putting tidbits of songs together, scribbling notes onto sheet after sheet of blank notepaper. However much I was entranced by the glossy, dark instrument, I lacked one thing: confidence. I would grow up to be a “house mother”, as I called them, or a nurse, or a lawyer. Never would I see my name in a thick book of music, accompanied by beautiful notes. But all of that was about to change. On a pleasant day, I was alone in the house, bound to the piano, testing out scales and chords and scrawling down potential titles on the tops of sheet music. It all began when someone left the windows open. My ears tuned to the melodic flow of the ebony and ivory keys, I did not notice a noise from the third-floor bedroom. After I abandoned my joy to make lunch, I sensed a bit of a fluttering noise from upstairs. Almost as if paper were being blown from the desk. But after a minute, it slowed and ceased. Shrugging it off, I returned to the piano, experimenting with an #A. Just when I had finished the phrase, I heard the doorbell chime, shattering the song. Ding-dong! I stood and hurried to answer the door. When I pulled back the door something amazing happened. Fourteen slender paper birds blew from the gusty tug of the wind onto the hearth. They were the same wallpaper birds which were a design of the wallpaper on the third-floor bedroom. Not even closing the door, I almost didn’t realize that this was irregular. I am guessing I was a bit numb from shock. I walked slowly to the piano and began to play the first scale in the song I had been composing. In a whirlwind I was suspicious didn’t come from outside, the wallpaper birds rose, slower than life, as the song built into climax the birds flew in a flurry around me. Just as I was nearing three-quarters through my song, the sound of the doorbell rang again, accompanied, by a timid knock on the partially-open door. “Martha? Benjamin?” The voice of our next-door neighbor, Mr. Watson, spoke quietly. The birds, who had stopped circling me, flattened against the wall. Mr. Watson’s plump, spectacled face peered inside. “Erica? Was that you playing? You should play in the Town Music Festival, I dare say. You have serious potential, I’m quite impressed! Quite a beautiful composition. Are either of your parents home?” I grinned in spite of myself.

As Mr. Watson wrote out his message, placing it by the corded phone, Erica’s plain face glowed with pleasure.

Our next penguins, the Yellow-eyed Penguins, live up to their name. Their eyes of pale yellow, gleaming like bright topaz gems, will grab your interest right away. These intruiging penguins are the rarest out of all of them! Their population is 1,500 to 2,000 pairs, which is very few next to the macaroni, which probably has around 2,000,000 pairs! They live on the coast of New Zealand and a few more southern islands. They nest in forests! They can be seen residing in little nests resembling shallow bowls, lined with twigs and grasses, like a sparrow or some other flying bird’s nest. However, the yellow-eyed penguins’ nests are on the forest floor where they can reach. These penguins need a lot of personal space: most of the time, nests are spaced out widely to one nest per hectare! This proves that the penguins seek solitude: they are the least socialable of all the penguins and seem to enjoy being out of sight of others except their mates and chicks. Even the little chicks don’t huddle off in créches, or nursery groups, like most penguin types. They like to stick with their parents. If you watch, some people see yellow-eyed penguins scuttle down to the sea to catch food at dawn or dusk! Their diet is 85% fish and 15% squid. They much catch a lot to eat, since they’re such swift swimmers! Another amazing fact about these penguins is that they can live to 20 years old! Yellow-eyed penguins are probably the closest penguins to the “original penguin” in appearance. They have grey-blue backs and white bellies. Their bills are red-purple. They are the third largest penguin, after the emperor and king. They get their name from their stunning yellow eyes. A crown of yellow feathers circles their eyes and wraps around the back of their head. However amazing these penguins are, they are classified as threatened or endangered. Their forests are sometimes chopped down, forcing these brilliant birds to nest in high grasses. Mammals, like dogs, cats, and ferrets that people have brought to the country can harm or eat them there! A Yellow-Eyed Penguin Trust was formed to help save these penguins. Every school in New Zealand got educational resource kits, and with everyone pitching in, the lives of yellow-eyed penguins began to improve. It fills me with joy that if people try hard enough, they can save species! If you can’t believe all of these interesting facts about yellow-eyed penguins, go to New Zealand and spot these birds with their beautiful yellow eyes for yourself!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph I researched and wrote on my own time.

Even though you’ve heard mostly about penguins like the adélie, emperor, and king, it’s not really realistic- most penguins live where it’s warmer or are even beach bums! A good phrase to describe the Galapagos penguin is “soaking up some sun rays”! These penguins live off the coast of Ecuador on the Galapagos Islands, on the Pacific Ocean. The air temperature can get over 100 degrees F, water temperature to 82 degrees F, and the dark feathers on their backs to 124 degrees F! This is 100 degrees (or more) warmer than the frosty Antarctic! Appropriately, Galapagos penguins nest in burrows, underneath plants, and in lava rock crevices. How do these penguins beat the heat, being the penguins living in the hottest climate?! The chilly Cromwell Current offers a refreshing dip, and the penguins spend a whole lot of time making a splash there. You might notice them panting like dogs that just ran like crazy. Humans sweat, but penguins lack sweat glands and lose body heat by panting. They hold their flippers slightly outward to lose more body heat and to keep their feet from getting sunburned! Even so, this type of penguin is officially endangered. There are only 15,000 birds left! This sad truth makes me want to hop a ship to the Galapagos and do something to help! Galapagos penguins are one of the smaller species, the smallest banded penguin. They have white stomachs and blue-black backs and heads. A blue-black band runs across their chests. Their bills are long and thin, like two burnt french fries stuck on top of one another! They are sometimes confused with their look-alike, the Magellanic, but Galapagos penguins are smaller and have thinner belly marks. So don’t take it for granted if you have air-contitioning and fans to keep you cool!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project.

The third Antarctic bird braving the cold down at the bottom of the world is another regal penguin: the King. King penguins are unique, skilled, and even wacky! King penguins don’t exactly live in Antarctic. They’re sub-Antarctic, they live around North Antarctica. They’re not the most abundant species of penguin, but they live in humungous colonies of up to 20,000 birds! Kings are a lot like Emperor penguins- they even look almost identical to them, but kings are just a bit smaller and more brightly colored. They have pupils the size of pinheads in the light, but they grow tremendous in the dark. This lets them catch up to 2,000 fish in the dim waters of the sea! It does sort of help that some fish glow in the dark, though. The king penguin babies are a little strange- they don’t look like their parents or even penguins at all! They are almost as large as their penguin parents, plump, fuzzy with no sleek feathers, and brown all over! They look so different that people used to think that they were another species, dubbing them “woolly penguins”! The king penguins eat squid and fish, but the dads can go for a month without food while their mates are at sea! But the babies are even tougher, able to fast for five months at once and lose 68% of their body weight! Parents are able to pick out the voice of their child from hundreds of chicks in a penguin créche, or huddle. When the chicks are in their eggs, adults keep them in their warm brood patches on their feet, the only penguins to not have nests. Parents take turns balancing the egg. Another interesting fact is that most penguins use a little hop to move around, but kings prefer running with their feet. To be able to observe these creatures at work and play would be more amazing than a trip to Hawaii for me.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was part of a school project.

The dough feels squishy and moist, but floury under my hands. “Squish it, Kimberly, squish it!” Magic squeals in his high, excited voice. Minna giggles. “Squish it!” she agrees. “Squish it flat!” I squish it to Magic and Minna’s preference, then roll it back into a ball to give Minna a turn. She pounds the dough with her fists, squashing it into a lumpy bump, giggling all the while. Magic has gotten a chance to pound the dough into a contorted circle already, so I help my brother and sister pinch the crust and smooth out the bottom of the powdery off-white dough. “Look, a pizza!” Minna giggles. “We’re making a pizza!” Magic screeched excitedly. “Just make sure it’s baked enough, unlike last time.” Nina calls from the living room, in which she is reading one of her old magazines. “We will, this time,” I say, turning to my little siblings. “All right. Now, who wants to do the tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings?” I asked. “Toppings!” Minna shrieks in her four-year-old voice, maybe a bit too loud. “Cheese! Wait- no, tomato sauce. Yeah, cheese. Wait, I like doing the tomato sauce better.” Magic ponders, as if it’s the greatest decision he’ll ever make. “Okay,” I say, not knowing what Magic really decided, and I let him slather on a thin coating of red tomato sauce. But he doesn’t stop at a thin coating. “Um, I think that’s enough,” I say to Magic and Minna’s gales of laughter when the crust is filled with red substance, and wipe about half of it up. How is it that we are always able to use half a jar of the stuff? I sprinkle on the cheese, then finally succumb to Magic’s whining that he wanted to do the cheese and let both of them dump on some shredded mozzarella, moist and cool from the fridge. I don’t care that they sneak fingerfuls of the cheese into their mouths, and I don’t argue that we should put the cheese away. I remember how I was when I helped Nina make pizzas at their age. Luckily, the family likes their pizza very cheesy. Minna’s chubby hands find their way into the mushrooms, peppers, ham, and pepperoni. I help Minna line the outside of the meal with a border of peppers and make a smiley face with the pepperoni. She hasn’t left enough patience for the mushrooms and ham, so they go all over the place. “It’s the smiley guy’s freckles.” Magic observes. I pinch up a bit of garlic, let it loose onto my wrists, spread my arms wide, and fling it out on the pizza. “Cool!” Magic and Minna giggle and squeal, jumping up and down. I let them fling a little bit of garlic around the kitchen (I’d dust it up later), but just a bit because more than a touch can violate the perfect taste of the Italian delicacy. “Can you spin it around on your fingers like the cooks on TV?” Magic asks. “I think you’re supposed to do that with the dough,” I said, “And I don’t think I can, anyway.” Or rather, I didn’t want to risk an overturned pizza. I scooped up the pizza on the black slate and lower it into our old oven. “We made a pizza, we made a pizza!” The little children giggle as I chop up a loaf of Italian bread, Magic butters it, and Minna sprinkles on a tiny bit of garlic (even Minna has learned just to use a bit on the garlic bread). When we have together set the table like waiters and waitresses, poured out water for everyone, and I’ve cut up a fruit plate, the kitchen is filled with the wonderful aroma of a warm pizza dinner. Our mouths water as I remove the pizza from the oven and set the giant smiley face down on the table. When everyone is sat down, Mom cuts it and I take a bite, a bite of a slice of sheer paradise.

Equally important to the Adélie penguin, the other Antarctic species is the exceptionally elegant Emperor penguin. Every winder’s end on this frozen continent, there comes a miraculous, exciting sound, full of wonder. Peck, peck! Peck, peck! The sound of hatching chicks! Why is this so miraculous, exciting, and wonderful? These emperor penguins are the only Antarctic bird to breed in the coldest season- winter! When baby eggs are struggling to thrive, temperatures can drop as low as -80 degrees, 80 degrees lower temperature than a freezer, and winds can get as raging as 125 MPH! How do even adults survive this cold, you wonder? Imagine wearing a thick, thick coat with even 70 feathers per square inch on it. That’s what the amazingly insulated Emperor feels like! Babies, after born, huddle together in créches, little “playgroups” to keep them warm. They also stay in their parents’ brood patch- a warm area under their stomachs- even after they hatch, until they can regulate their own body temperature. Another interesting fact about their way of life is that they can dive 1,752 feet underwater and hold their breath for 18 minutes at a time!!!!! In fact, these penguins are clearly record-breakers. The biggest penguins, they can get up to four feet tall, which is so tall they could walk on the bottom of almost half of the big pool at an average recreation center without a problem! Emperors have black beaks and white bellies with a tinge of orange around their chests. Wait- one more record coming up! Emperors are the only penguins that may never touch land in a lifetime other than ice floes floating in the water! No wonder they’re good swimmers! These penguins are literally the “Amazing Atheletes of Antarctica”. Imagine how amazing it would be to rule Antarctica like a real monarch as one of these awesome emperors.
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project.

Although most people think of penguins as living in Antarctica, only seven of seventeen penguin species even go near this gigantic chunk of ice, and only two species spend their lives there. One of these phenomenal two species, the adorable and classic adélie, has been know to peck and waddle its way into people’s hearts. Holding the record for the furthest-south penguins, adélies even have a colony way down at the bottom of the world in Cape Royds, Antarctica! Named for a French 1830′s explorer’s wife, these penguins have black backs and heads and snow-white bellies. It’s one of the three brush-tail penguins, known for its brushlike tail. You’ve probably seen pictures of these adélies gliding along on their bellies. No matter how delightful their penguin swagger can be, sliding on their stomachs saves much more energy and waddling can be hard for them. In fact, walking takes 42% more energy than it does for a turkey! These penguins like to stick together. Gray, downy chicks huddle in a crèche- a kind of penguin day-care that keeps them warm and offers protection from skuas and other vicious birds that would like to gobble them up. The adults are often seen diving for food in groups. This keeps them safer from water predators, like leopard seals! If you know these perky penguins well, you can say that they’re as curious as Curious George, superbly intelligent, and of course- as cute as a button!
NOTE: This nonfiction paragraph was written for a school project.

Scrub slept peacefully on the tiny dollar they had rescued from the wash. Scringe adjusted his eyeglasses as he flipped to the third page of the news. Drittle dunked yet another scrub brush into the bucket of soapy water they had snatched from the last wash. The three fuzzy teardrop-shaped laundry creatures jumped when a loud metal clanging interrupted them. “Another wash?” Scringe asked, amazed, in his heavy English accent. “Oh, I was just getting some rest,” Scrub, the youngest, rubbed his eyes. “The scrub brushes aren’t even completely washed yet!” Drittle announced, angrily. “Well, I guess we’ll have to.” the laundry creatures hurried to the edge of their apartment in the laundry machine and closed the door tightly, as to block the soapy water that might get in. Each laundry creature scampered into the pole in the middle of the wash machine. They peeked out from the little compartment to see what was to be washed that day. Navy soccer shorts, a blue shirt, a dark blue sun hat, and dark blue underwear were dropped into the machine. The user of the washing machine dropped in the cup full of laundry soap. The creatures quickly hurried out of the pole, dunked their scrub brushes in the blue liquid, and hurried into the pole again just in time to hear the final tick of the user setting the correct time of the wash. The whirring and the soapy water and the clothes thrashed and were swept all around the laundry machine. “All right, let’s get started,” Scringe said loudly, over the hum. “Remember, you have to do this just right!” He climbed up to the top of the pole, and suddenly lifted the lid off of it and plunged himself- on top of a floating shirt on the surface. “All right! Drittle!” Scringe called proudly, beginning to scrub the shirt free of dirt patches. “Okay! I’m coming!” Drittle said nervously, climbing to the top of the pole, he flung himself onto the hat, and began to free it of the musty dirt color. Scrub climbed to the top of the pole and, frightened, threw himself right into the soapy water (as he always did)! “Scrub, over here,” Drittle said impatiently, and Scrub blubbed toward him and pulled himself up onto the hat. They started to scrub together, occasionally leaping onto other floating clothes to scrub them clean. Finally, the soapy water retreated, the whirring stopped, and the washing creatures were standing on top of wet, washed clothes. “A job well done,” Drittle praised, as the three walked back to their apartment. “Yes, a job well done.” Scringe agreed, pleased. The three creatures climbed into the apartment and began to wash their scrub brushes, unaware that outside another user was walking toward their machine holding a white sundress, a white ball cap, a white shirt, a pair of socks, and some white jeans…