Penny the Penguin: Why Parents and Kids Alike Are Falling in Love with This Bedtime Story

Every parent knows the drill. Bath time, pajamas, three drinks of water, one more trip to the bathroom. Then the lights go dim and you crack open a book. Some nights that book lands with a thud. Other nights, your kid asks for it again, and again, and again.

Penny the Penguin is the kind of book that earns those repeat requests.

The story starts on an ordinary day for Kitty and Dino until snow starts falling out of nowhere. Not a snow day. Not winter. Just snow, tumbling down from somewhere that makes no sense. The trail leads Kitty and Dino up a mountain they’ve never seen before, and that’s where they find Penny.

Penny is a penguin who should be excellent at snow. She lives on a mountain. She snowboards. She’s got the gear, the moves, the whole thing dialed in. But right now, she’s sitting in the middle of a snowstorm that she can’t control, crying so hard her tears freeze before they hit the ground. Something scared her on the Triple Loop, and now her snow magic has gone haywire.

What I love about this part is that Penny isn’t broken. She’s not wrong. She’s scared. There’s a difference, and kids feel it.

Kitty and Dino don’t fix her. They don’t lecture her. They don’t bring a toolbox and explain the physics of snow. They just stay. They sit with her in the mess she’s made, and they start asking questions. Kitty suggests they practice the jumps again, starting small. Dino watches carefully and figures out that Penny’s magic works when she feels confident, not when she feels pressured. So they try again. A small jump first. Then another. Then the Triple Loop.

The snowstorm stops when Penny lands it, not because she stopped being afraid, but because she learned that being afraid and trying anyway is what courage actually looks like.

This is why parents keep reaching for this book. It’s not a lesson in a neat package. It’s a story about showing up for someone you care about, and trusting them to figure it out. That lands differently for a four-year-old than it does for a parent reading it for the fifteenth time at 8 PM on a Tuesday.

The characters are simple and expressive. Kitty is curious and quick. Dino is the kind of steady that grows things. Penny is someone who knows she’s good at something until suddenly she isn’t, and she has to find her way back. Kids see themselves in all three of them at different moments. Learn more about how reading together changes everything.

For teachers and early childhood educators, this book also works beautifully as a classroom read. The story structure is predictable enough for emergent readers to follow along, but the emotional beats have enough texture to spark conversation. What scared Penny? Why couldn’t she make the snow stop? What did Kitty and Dino do differently? Those are questions that lead somewhere.

It fits naturally into SEL curriculum too. The book gives you a handle on topics that are hard to talk about directly with four and five-year-olds — confidence, fear, asking for help — without being heavy-handed about it. Teachers use it during circle time, during guided reading, and as a bridge into conversations about managing big feelings. At the kindergarten and first-grade level, it’s one of the more versatile picture books in the series. For more books that work well in classroom settings, see our magical garden books guide.

The reading level sits comfortably at around 400 to 600 words, making it accessible for early readers who are just starting to decode on their own. Parents report that their kids will pick it up and narrate it back, which is a good sign that the language is landing.

The pacing is right for bedtime. It moves, but it doesn’t rush. There are moments of quiet, moments of action, and a resolution that actually resolves. No twist that requires a second reading to understand. No dark turn that makes the last page awkward. Just a good story that ends the way it should. If you’re working on building a consistent bedtime routine, our screen-free bedtime activities guide can help.

The illustrations pull their weight too. Penny’s expressions shift naturally from defeated to determined, and the snowy mountain setting is the kind of cozy-dangerous that kids find irresistible. It’s cold, but it looks warm. It looks like a place you want to be.

If you’re looking for a bedtime story that doesn’t require you to explain yourself at the end, this one slides right in. It’s warm without being sweet, adventurous without being loud, and the kind of book that makes “one more page” feel reasonable.

You can find Penny the Penguin on Amazon, where it’s available as part of the Magical Tales of Kitty and Dino series. The whole series follows the same format: two friends, one problem, a lesson that doesn’t feel like a lesson. It’s the kind of series you build a reading routine around. Browse the full collection of Kitty and Dino books.

Whether it’s tonight or this weekend, give it a read. Your kid will probably ask for it again tomorrow.

Read the full series at kittyanddino.com — where every story begins with two friends and a problem worth solving.