When Hurricane Katrina overwhelms the city of New Orleans, the animals at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas find themselves in danger. Patience, a South African penguin who is the leader of the aquarium's penguins, grows concerned when their habitat grows unbearably hot, and Tom, their regular keeper, does not appear. Fortunately, Tom eventually does make it to the aquarium, and Patience and her companions are evacuated and moved to Baton Rouge, and thence to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Although the penguins enjoy this temporary home, Patience waits (patiently) for their return to their own home in New Orleans...

Like Kirby Lawson and Mary Nethery's Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship, and Survival, this tale of penguins caught up in a natural disaster presents children with an animal's perspective on Hurricane Katrina, emphasizing that people aren't alone, in bearing the brunt of nature's fury during these terrible events. Although I didn't find this as moving as the story of the 'Two Bobbies' - somehow, Patience's patience wasn't as touching as the two Bobbies' devotion to one another - and found the ways in which the penguins here were anthropomorphized occasionally unconvincing (would the penguins really care about coming home to New Orleans, when they were happy in their new home, or was that more of a human concern?), A Penguin Named Patience was still an engaging book, sure to appeal to young animal lovers. ( )