It’s February, the month to celebrate LOVE!  There are so many different kinds of love – romantic love, the love that families have for one another, love for our friends, love for our neighbors, love for our pets… Although I don’t think we need a particular day to remind us to share our love, I can’t argue with extra love and cheer during one of the coldest months of the year.  So, for February’s diverse kid lit title, I’ve chosen a book that celebrates love…

And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

The penguins at the Central Park Zoo are pairing off and building their nests, getting ready to welcome a new flock of chicks!  All over the Penguin House, girl penguins and boy penguins are getting together and falling in love.  And then there are Roy and Silo…

Roy and Silo are inseparable, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that they pair off and build a nest together.  But neither one of them is able to lay an egg, because they are both boys.  In one of the most heartbreaking vignettes I’ve encountered in a children’s book, Roy and Silo find a rock and take turns sitting on it, hoping to hatch a chick of their very own.  A zookeeper notices the penguins trying to hatch a chick, and finds them an egg that needs a home…

Roy and Silo take turns sitting on the egg, just like all the other penguin couples… until the day when their egg hatches and Tango arrives!

A sweet, fuzzy chick, Tango settles right into her new family – “the very first penguin in the zoo to have two daddies.”

And Tango Makes Three is a true story of two male chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo, who built a nest and raised a chick together.  Tango’s egg was laid by a female penguin who had only been able to care for one egg at a time; when she laid two eggs, the zookeepers made the decision to transfer one egg to Roy and Silo, knowing they would be able to care for the chick and her birth parents would not.  I teared up as I read about Roy and Silo tending to a rock in place of an egg, and cheered when Tango hatched and made their daddy penguin dreams come true.

It’s sad but not surprising that And Tango Makes Three has been the subject of a great deal of controversy ever since its publication.  We love this sweet tale of a precious penguin family who become symbols of the power of love.  And Tango Makes Three is a wonderful way to introduce children to the concept that there are all kinds of families, and that what unites them all is LOVE.  (And Moms and Dads, if you haven’t watched the episode of Parks and Recreation in which Leslie performs a wedding ceremony for two male penguins and creates a storm of controversy in Pawnee – go watch it.  It’s one of the most perfect thirty minutes of television I have ever seen.)

Have you read And Tango Makes Three?