The penguin lessons, by Tom Michel

4/5

Tom Michell is a self-described callow youth when he arrives

in Argentina in the 1970s to teach in a boys’ boarding school, “a country
boy from the gentle Downs of rural Sussex” who is unprepared for life
under Isabel Perón’s government, and the threat of a military coup.
But The Penguin Lessons isn’t a history book, or a travelogue, either,
although it does touch on politics and on Michell’s explorations: it’s the
story of how, on one of his journeys, he found an oil-drenched penguin on
the beach in Punta del Este in Uruguay, and smuggled it back to his
school.

Michell sees just one penguin alive amid a scene of devastation, hundreds
of birds lying dead in the sand “from the high water mark to the sea and
stretching far away along the shore to the north”. He decides he has to
save this one bird, and manages to transport it back to the flat where he’s
staying. “I couldn’t dream up a more unsuitable place for cleaning a tar-
sodden penguin,” he writes, before carefully immobilising it and setting to
work with various products, “ butter and margarine, olive oil and cooking
oil, soap, shampoo and detergent”.

Charmingly illustrated with sketches, Michell’s memoir is affectionate, though

never sentimental

Once clean, the penguin won’t stop following him when he tries to return
it to the sea, and he resolves, with the insouciance of a man in his 20s, to
take it with him over the border and back to his Argentinian school.

There, the penguin, now named Juan Salvador - after the Spanish version
of Jonathan Livingston Seagull - wins the heart of everyone it meets,
watching rugby matches from the sideline, swimming in the school pool,
doted on by pupils and teachers alike.

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“Perhaps an English boarding school (or one in South America) mirrors

life in a penguin rookery more than most other forms of human society,”
Michell writes, pondering on how it was that “a penguin brought such
comfort and tranquillity to the people whose lives he touched”.

Charmingly illustrated with sketches of the Magellan penguin, Michell’s

memoir is affectionate, although never sentimental. It’s also funny,
particularly as he recounts his journey back to Argentina. There’s the
penguin guano stinking out the bus, which he attempts to pretend has
nothing to do with him, and then trying to get through customs with a
story (intended to appeal to Argentine nationalism) about his repatriation
of an Argentine penguin. Michell hopes Juan Salvador will go unnoticed,
but the bird lets out an almighty squawk, and the customs officer isn’t
about to listen to “the finer points of habeas corpus for penguins”.

The humour doesn’t always quite pay off, and the author has a bit of a
tendency to overegg a narrative that really doesn’t need it. “Goodbye, little
bird ... Henceforth, may your path be untrammelled and untroubled.” But
it’s clear that this is a much-beloved tale about a much-beloved bird -
Michell admits that Juan Salvador has been the subject of “countless
Michell family bedtime stories” - and it is, for the most part,
heartwarmingly eccentric. Given the popularity of Monty the penguin and
the ever-present appetite of British readers for animal books, it’s bound to
be a hit.

WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT

MENTION MEMORABLE CHARACTERS

DON’T MUCH TIME DESCRIBING THEM

It tells the story about

The Penguin Lessons is the story of a young Englishman who, on vacation

in Uruguay from his teaching job at a boarding school in Argentina,
rescues an oil-covered Magellanic penguin. This memoir will charm
anyone who loves these tuxedo-feathered birds — and Neil Baker’s
illustrations, on the cover and scattered throughout the book, are
enchanting.
Author Tom Michell first encounters the penguin on a beach among
thousands of dead birds, and he manages to bring it back to his vacation
apartment to clean its feathers of oil. “The penguin was filthy and very
aggressive. Its beak snapped shut with a metallic clack like a pair of dental
pliers as it continually twisted and turned in its attempts to savage me.”

And this is the last time the bird behaves like a wild penguin. As Michell
begins to clean the bird’s feathers, “it became a docile and cooperative
partner in this cleanup operation.” And when the time comes for Michell
to return the penguin to the sea, the bird won’t go, instead following him
across the beach, and then back across the road. (Michell learned much
later, from a keeper at a sanctuary, that penguins can’t be released on
their own, “without a fellow creature of their own kind; they won’t leave.”)
And so Michell has no choice but to bring him home.
Woven into Michell’s story of smuggling the penguin, eventually named
Juan Salvado (“John Saved”), back into Argentina and attempting to find
him an appropriate home are tales of his experiences teaching and living
in a Buenos Aires suburb during the mid-1970s. Before the military coup
that ousted Isabel Perón’s government, inflation was 100 percent a
month, and the local markets doubled their prices every couple of weeks,
which meant that the best use of one’s paycheck was to spend it all at
once, and then trade for whatever else you might need. “I bought jeans
that wouldn’t fit and shirts I’d never wear,” Michell recalls, “…and I had no
trouble bartering my goods later on.” Among those who suffered most
were school employees, like the housekeeper Maria: “The poor,
the descamisados, were rewarded with money that rapidly devalued,
leaving them nothing to show for it. The rich were the beneficiaries,
because their assets maintained or increased in value, as a result of labor
they paid for with worthless money.”
In the midst of this poverty, uncertainty, and political strife, Juan Salvado
wins over staff, students, and employees alike as he lives on the outdoor
terrace of Michell’s campus housing. Students vie for the privilege of
buying him food from the local fishmonger and taking part in his care.
Many simply enjoy spending time talking to Juan Salvado. “Juan Salvado
was such a good listener, patiently absorbing everything that was said to
him, from observations about the weather to secrets of the heart, and he
never once interrupted. He looked people straight in the eye and always
paid such close attention to what was said that his guests were inclined to
talk to him on equal terms—they thought him a wise old bird.”

Michell’s is not the only tale of Magellanic penguins (for some reason
referred to as “Magellan penguins” in the book) acting more like pets
than wild animals. There is Turbo of the Punta Tombo colony, who has
never been fed by researchers but who nevertheless sees himself more as
one of them than one of his own colony. And there is Jinjing, who after
feeding at sea returns to Brazil rather than his native Argentina, to visit
the retired bricklayer who rescued him from an oil spill. The many charms
of this species—and the incredible nature of all penguins—are lovingly
told in this story.
Michell’s travels include a quest to find a new home for Juan Salvado, and
readers are sure to enjoy the travelogue as well as the story of the
penguin himself (Michell’s description of the noses of elephant seal bulls
on Peninsula Valdés is one of the best I’ve read: “having a pendulous
protuberance like a large crumpled boot where they could reasonably
expect to have a nose”).

While this book is overall a light, easygoing read, Michell also poses
tough but necessary questions about what he sees on his travels, and how
he came to discover Juan Salvado in the first place: “How, in a world so
full of astonishing beauty and priceless wonders, had humans devised
such misery, and not just for our own species?” He experiences an
environmental awakening, making the very real and important connection
between how humans treat one another and how they treat the planet:
“In an equivalent way that millions of Marias paid indirectly for all the
mortgaged homes of the middle classes in Buenos Aires thanks to
inflation, it is the penguins and the rest of nature’s descamisados who pay
the real cost of our way of life, in the only currency they have.”

I have a long-term affection for penguins. As a child, the Penguin Parade was the highlight of any
visit to Edinburgh Zoo and it still makes me so sad to see how far diminished it has become. There
is something about them – is it the way in which their feathers resemble a tuxedo, adding a peculiar
dignity to the way they waddle about? Is it the contrast in their on-land and in-water
behaviours? Whatever it is, there is something truly remarkable about penguins and seeing them
always makes me happy. However, other than Death and the Penguin, I have never really spotted
many books in which a penguin plays a significant role, so when I spotted The Penguin Lessons, I
knew that I was going to need to investigate further. I finally sat down to the audiobook and via the
soothing tones of Bill Nighy, I heard the beautiful story of Juan Salvador. He was a friend, a
companion and also happened to be a penguin.

Tom Michell was a middle-class young Englishman from rural Sussex,

doing the 1973 equivalent of a ‘gap yah’ teaching abroad in a boy’s boarding school in Argentina. A
few days of holiday took him to stay with some expat friends in Uruguay, where he saw some
penguins diving for fish. Wondering why there were not more penguins about when there were such
easy pickings, he walked further along the beach and the reason became immediately obvious. With
great restraint, Michell describes what looked at first like a ‘black carpet’ with lumps in it. It was in
fact an oil slick which had engulfed hundreds penguins, killing them all. Bill Nighy’s voice remains
calm throughout but it is a truly distressing passage, as Michell contemplates how nature is
despoiled by the acts of man.
Looking on at the devastation, watcching as each new wave washes more little carcasses on to the
shore, he notices one of the penguins is still moving. While his first thought was to end its suffering,
watching the little creature struggle to its feet, Michell realises that he needs to do something to
come to the bird’s assistance. Managing to find an old fishing net among the flotsam and jetsam on
the beach, he takes the bird, who is understandably furious about his situation, and manages to carry
it back to his lodgings. Using butter, soap, olive oil, shampoo and indeed anything else that
happened to be at hand, Michell does his best to wash the oil off the bird and return it to its original
state. The point where the bird stops trying to bite and, apparently recognising that Michell is trying
to help, begins to cooperate is really remarkable.

With the penguin once more in a state of cleanliness, Michell hoped

originally to return it to the sea. However, uncertain about what damage the washing process might
have done to the waterproofing of the penguin’s feathers (and with no way in the pre-Search Engine
days of looking it up), Michell was wary about what to do. To make matters more complicated,
even when he took the penguin down to the sea, it flat out refused to leave his side. The situation
was clear. For better or worse, Michell had just adopted a penguin.
The memoir’s overall atmosphere is one of whimsy. Michell’s continuing adventures as guardian to
a penguin kick off with all the fuss around getting his charge smuggled back across the border into
Argentina . The penguin evacuates its bowels while on a bus while Michell was talking to a pretty
girl with whom he thought he had hit it off but who backed off due to the smell). Michell then has to
negotiate the whole ‘having a penguin’ point with a border guard. My own favourite though was
when a young street child ran up asking if Michell wanted a shoe shine, but then in the middle of his
work, the child spots the penguin peeking out from the bag in which he was hidden. The question,
“Senor, why do you have a penguin” stumps Michell and ultimately the child nods and answers
himself, “Because you are English”. The baffling behaviour of the British abroad is so accepted as
eccentric that even when one of these strange creatures is travelling with a penguin, one cannot be
surprised.

Moving into the boarding school, the penguin gains a

name – Juan Salvador – and a following of fans, with the boarding school pupils all coming to
confide in him in times of emotional distress. One boy discusses with the penguin over whether he
should ask out the girl he likes. The overworked school cleaner chats with Juan Salvador as she
goes about her work. He is the perfect listener, never interrupts and seems to take a genuine interest
in the welfare of his new friends. Michell imagines the penguin’s inner voice, with Bill Nighy
adopting a particular business-like tone while inhabiting the spirit of Juan Salvador – this is a
penguin who takes life seriously. Michell recounts the various ways in which Juan Salvador
improved the lives of all he touched, of the penguin’s role as mascot on the rugby team and how he
spurred them on to a better performance, and then most touchingly of all, the incident where a young
boy who had been an outcast within the school leaped into the swimming pool to swim with the
penguin and was exposed as a champion swimmer. Juan Salvador was a beacon within the school,
brightening the lives of all who lived and worked there.
The Penguin Lessons is a light-hearted memoir, Michell’s rose-tinted memories of his own
youth. Of course the man now in his sixties would look back on the madcap adventures of his
twenty year-old self with affection. Who would not want to tell their children about when Daddy
was known as the Englishman who went about with a penguin? This is also a book heavily
influenced by the expat experience. It is not about life in Argentina, for while Michell recognises
and refers to the political instability in the region – he was originally warned off going there in the
first place – these are very much events which are happening to other people. The cleaning lady will
have to pay the price, but not Michell or indeed anyone he knows. He is working in a school for rich
boys whose parents want them to have the trappings of an English education despite living in South
America – the environment could hardly be more British. Yet for all this, the genuine warmth with
which Michell remembers his penguin companion makes The Penguin Lessons a really likeable
book. It was originally marketed around Christmas 2015 but I find myself thinking of it more as an
ideal beach read. It is easy to imagine Juan Salvador waddling around the edge of the school
swimming pool in the sun, undecided about whether he wants to get in. So easy in fact that I was
astonished to find actual video footage of the penguin himself back in the 1970s, doing just
that. He was just as I had pictured.
This is a hugely friendly book – it has the feel of a personal anecdote, as if one sat down beside Tom
Michell at a dinner party and he began regaling the table with the escapades of his long-departed
companion. We sense his grief at the penguin’s ultimate departure and as Nighy describes Michell’s
recent return visit to Argentina, we have a sense of a long-held worry that he had somehow failed the
penguin in being unable to return him to the sea. Michell is the classic stiff-upper-lip British male
and The Penguin Lessons can be taken as a dignified tribute to a fallen companion, the ultimate
eulogy to Juan Salvador, a penguin of true courage.

The Penguin Lessons is a warm and unique story about an unlikely friendship
between a man and a penguin, and fond memories of a long-ago trip to South
America.

In his early twenties, Tom Michell sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a trip
abroad to teach English in a school in Argentina and he takes it without thinking
twice. Completely immersed in a radically different culture, he begins to explore
South America full of wild enthusiasm and a sense of long-suppressed
adventure. It is on an expedition to Uruguay that he encounters Juan Salvador
the penguin.

Travelling to the coast, Michell comes across a flock of dead penguins on a

beach as a result of an oil spill. Horrified, he spots a solitary waving wing, and
comes to the rescue of Juan Salvador. He proceeds to smuggle him across the
Argentinian border and back to the school, where the penguin becomes an
instant celebrity.

What follows the fateful meeting of man and penguin is a collection of vignettes
about life in the school for Juan Salvador, and his relationships with those
around him. Life for the feisty penguin in the school revolves around a happy
routine as he takes residence in a sunny terrace and enjoys the pleasure of
company from staff and student alike.
Although sometimes it feels slightly stretched, Michell ties Juan Salvador into
pivotal moments in the lives of students and friends. The result is a warm
collection of tales from a cherished time in the authors life, and reading them
has the potential to inspire nostalgia, however vicariously. Reading about Juan
Salvador as he becomes school mascot, swims like an Olympian in the school
pool, and lends a friendly ear to the gossiping housemaids, it’s hard not to wish
you were there.

Although this book is primarily a memoir based entirely on individual

experience, Michell attempts to tie in certain elements into the personal
narrative – namely the turbulent political situation in South America,
the unbalanced economy, and most relevantly, the environmental damage
wreaked on wild animals by humans. While the wider political and economic
observations are fleeting and sparse, they’re still interesting, and they surround
a lovely story about a remarkable trip to the other side of the world and a
gorgeous friendship between one man and his penguin.

This book was really sweet in places, but I did occasionally feel my attention drifting. Tom had
much the same views and concerns about modern civilisation as me and Juan Salvador was
adorable and I applaud anyone who helps an animal in need. I also agree that the penguin had
a better life at the school than he probably would have had in a zoo, however, I couldn't help but
feel as if more could have been done to put him back in the wild. I'm no expert and I've
obviously never been in that position, but it just seemed he jumped to conclusions rather quickly
without proper info - and before someone points it out, they didn't have Google then, I know, but
there were other ways of researching things!

All in all like I said, this was a sweet book and I love true stories, but there were parts of it that
were very slow going...

It’s very rare that I actually part with money for a book by an author I haven’t read before. I’m so
glad that when this came up on Kindle Daily Deal recently I did though as it was an absolute
delight to read.

The Penguin Lessons is definitely one of those cases where the truth is stranger than fiction as
Tom Michell invites readers to go on a journey with him to the South America of his youth, back
in the 1970s. The story of himself and Juan Salvador is absolutely beautifully and charmingly
written with the characters of both man and penguin, as well as the other people who populate
the narrative, just jumping off the page. I loved the way that Mr Michell interpreted looks from
Juan Salvador and wrote conversational exchanges between the penguin and his human
friends. I came away from the book feeling like I’d actually known – and loved – this penguin
myself.

As well as telling the story of Juan Salvador, the author also paints beautiful pictures of the
scenery, wildlife, and daily life in Argentina and other areas of South America at that time. It
presents a unique snapshot of a unique time and place. And using his artistic skills, he also
leaves readers with an illustration of his penguin friend at the end of every chapter, complete
with a caption relevant to the incidents recounted.

I can highly recommend this tender, charming, and heartfelt little book. I came away with my
heart feeling warmed. Juan Salvador is still touching people’s lives all these years later.

This is the story of a young Englishman who travels to Argentina to take up a teaching post in
an elite English school in the southern suburbs of Buenos Aires. On a week-end break in
Uruguay he is adopted by a lone penguin which, being an English animal lover, sets him up for
a hilarious tale of getting the penguin through the immigration authorities when he takes it back
to Buenos Aires with him. Thereafter the penguin plays a pivotal role in this young teacher's
connection with his students, he takes an active part in school life as a mascot for their rugby
team and there are many amusing but at the same time heartwarming narratives of life for a
penguin in a boys' boarding school. An absolutely wonderful story, beautifully written, with an
enchanting twist at the end. I recommend it to people of all ages and walks of life.

In this lively and endearing memoir, Britain-born Michell narrates an

unexpected encounter on a Uruguayan sojourn in the 1970s, and its
surprising consequences. The 23-year-old Michell is en route to his
position as an English teacher at a boarding school in Argentina when he
happens upon a beach littered with thousands of migrating Magellanic
penguins that had been felled by an oil slick dumped at sea. Sickened by
the devastating spectacle, Michell decides to save the life of the lone
living penguin. He transports the "tar-sodden" bird back to his temporary
apartments, where, undeterred by the frightened creature's nasty bite, he
manages to clean his captive. In one of many miraculous moments, the
penguin swiftly realizes that Michell is attempting to save him. Michelle
names him Juan Salvado, John Saved, but also Juan Salvador, John
Savior, because of his redemptive qualities. In clever, entertaining
vignettes accompanied by simple yet engaging illustrations, Michell
recalls secretly transporting Juan on a bus, nervously sneaking him
through customs during a chaotic period in Argentina's history, and
introducing the bird to a community of 300 boys and school personnel,
where he becomes the rugby team mascot, an acrobatic (non-
chlorinated) pool swimmer, and a beloved confidante to many who delight
in feeding him sprats. Michell, now a grandfather living in Cornwall,
interweaves introspection, travel tales, and penguin facts in a charming
story that also reveals the charismatic nature of this gregarious and
increasingly endangered species