National Geographic marches with penguins

Last summer's surprise hit movie "March of the Penguins" (now out on DVD) has been captured in two volumes from National Geographic Books--a lavishly illustrated hard cover tabletop edition as well as a delightful softcover children's version, both telling the inspiring story of the emperor penguins' yearly Antarctic odyssey and the long months of endurance, self-sacrifice, and love as they raise a new generation of chicks.

Everything about "March of the Penguins" is extraordinary--the birds themselves, their arduous trek in single file through the world's most forbidding landscape of blue-white ice swept by blizzards and gale-force winds, their elaborate courtship, and the almost unimaginable ordeal each penguin couple endures as they safeguard a single, precious egg.

Now, in a visually dramatic adult companion book to the movie (already the second most popular documentary in American motion picture history and the highest-grossing natural history film of all time), film maker Luc Jacquet traces the emperor penguins' rigorous walk to their breeding grounds, their mating rituals, the parents' journey back to the ocean to gather food (a round trip of up to 140 miles) and the remarkable adventure of the film crew's 13-month making of the motion picture, an accomplishment almost as demanding, challenging and triumphant as that of the birds they depict.

Highlighted by 150 vivid color photographs, most by "March of the Penguins" cinematographer Jerome Maison, who spent 13 months on the ice to capture these extraordinary images, the book ($30, children's version, $5.95) tells the story of love and dedication--between penguin mates and between parents and the single downy chick each must nourish and protect.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning