Do Penguins Have Knees?
Penguins DO have knees, and I can prove it. I touched a penguin's knee myself during the photo shoot for this book.
I've always been a follower of Ann Landers's author photo philosophy: find one good photo and stick with it forever -- with luck, readers might actually believe you are as young as the photo. But I took advantage of the title Imponderable to have my picture taken with Klousseau, a penguin at the New York Aquarium. It took awhile, but we eventually bonded and we ended up with a decent picture. Don't worry, we reverted back to the old picture for the next book. And in my best Ann Landers imitation, I didn't change the photo until this year, when my beard seems to have disappeared.
Penguins is my best-selling book in hardbound, and I've always assumed it was because of Kassie Schwan's wonderful illustration of a befuddled penguin looking down trying to answer this Imponderable. For the new cover design, the penguin has changed but the charm remains...