Free Eve of the Emperor Penguin by Mary Pope Osborne

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F or many years, one of my favorite places to visit has been the Central Park Zoo in New York City. My husband, Will, and I love going there for one main reason: to visit the building where about sixty gentoo and chinstrap penguins live. The penguins always make us laugh—especially when they jump out of the water onto the edge of their pool. We also love watching their keepers call each penguin by name and hand-feed fish to them.
    While I was writing this book, I combined my memories of watching the penguins at the zoo with my research on Antarctica. And I used my imagination to think about Jack and Annie searching for a secret of happiness to share with Merlin. I always mix these three things together to create a Magic Tree House book: memory, research, and imagination. But there’s one other ingredient that goes into my work on this series: joy. I love to write—and I love sharing Jack and Annie’s adventures with you. That’s one of my own personal secrets of happiness.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
    Text copyright © 2008 by Mary Pope Osborne
Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Sal Murdocca
    All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
    Random House and colophon are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc. Magic Tree House is a registered trademark of Mary Pope Osborne; used under license.
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    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Osborne, Mary Pope.
Eve of the emperor penguin / by Mary Pope