And Tango Makes Three (Classic Board Books)

Beautiful story! Buy this book for all my friends kids!

This book was recommended as part of a list of diverse books for children which is how I came to purchase it. It has a lovely story which I hadn’t realised was based on a true story about a pair of penguins in New York. Given it’s a board book, I was expecting a lot less words. My nine month old got quite impatient half way through due to the length of the story and improvisation to the written text was required! This was my bad as I didn’t research the target age. Overall well illustrated story book which I’ll revisit when the little one is a bit older.

very cute book

True story, well written that melt the heart and open space to reflect regarding the concept of biological family. I highly recommend it.

This is such a special, special book, telling the story of love and family diversity brilliantly and with sensitivity. There us no shoe-horning in of ‘author's message’. No preaching and no finger-wagging. Just a beautiful story for children to enjoy. Great for PSHE lessons in primary years.

My 3 year old daughter loves this book so much it is one of the few books of many that she recites from memory.

I really like this. I believe it could be written in a way that would have been more engaging, however; it is a little long-winded for its target audience and I've had children under five get bored before the end when I've read it (I am a former children's librarian). But the story is adorable and it has become a classic of early years literature, standing out for being a true story and having a very accessible LGBT theme, which is introduced in a very natural way. I have had a couple of conversations with children about gay parents when reading this book when they have had trouble understanding the concept, but often it is just accepted by children that the penguins are both male. It is fairly popular with children (though more so with liberal adults) and the illustrations are beautiful. I believe the company Educate and Celebrate have a lesson plan based on this book, so if you are a teacher reading this review, search for that online.

Three year old adores this book and now spends large parts of the day building a nest and sitting on her penguin egg. This is a far messier task than you might imagine, but, as penguins need to be quiet to get their eggs to hatch, it's a welcome relief from the aural-assault I've had to endure since she learned to talk 18 months ago 😁 The story is sweet, as are the drawings, and the book has a great message. It's given us a great conversation starter to talk about how families are all different shapes and sizes 👍

And tango makes three è una tenera e toccante fiaba, resa ancora più bella dalke dalle illustrazioni perfette di Henry Cole, ed è ispirata alla storia vera di Roy e Silo, due pinguini maschi dello zoo di Central Park che nel 2000, grazie a un guardiano intenerito dalla bellezza del loro amore, divennero la prima coppia omogenitoriale ad "adottare" un uovo e a prendersi cura di una pulcina, la piccola Tango. È un racconto davvero dolce e pieno di speranza, che esalta la diversità e ci ricorda un fatto ovvio ma sempre valido: famiglia è dove c'è amore. C'è un gran bisogno di storie come questa, coi tempi che corrono.

Amazing book! Such a wonderful story about penguins and love.

Absolutely loved this story (originally borrow the book from the library) that we bought a copy to keep at home. The CD/narrated version by Neil Patrick-Harris is really good. I love that it's a TRUE story of two male penguins raising a penguin from birth.

Beautiful book…. A must read for all

Funny - as I finished reading this beautiful book for the first time, one of my old favorite songs (by Hal David/Burt Bacharach) as a child growing up in the 60's started playing in my head... What the world needs now is love sweet love, It's the only thing that there's just too little of. What the world needs now is love sweet love, No not just for some but for everyone! The simplicity of the words husband and husband team Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell have used to tell the true story of a couple of male chinstrap penguins (Roy and Silo) at New York's Central Park Zoo, who had paired off as a couple and were given an extra fertilized egg to hatch on their way to becoming a family unlike any of the zoo's other animal families (but a family nonetheless!), makes this book a perfect way to begin naturally introducing the concepts of acceptance and inclusion to youngsters. The soft illustrations by Henry Cole are such a nice complement to the story - I'm really looking forward to sharing this special book with our four grandchildren, who will most certainly be meeting many families of varying composition during their lifetimes! The way baby Tango and his dads are welcomed by the children coming to see them after his birth is a good "footprint in the sand" to leave on a child's growing sense of the world around them. I'm a dozen years late in my personal discovery of the book, so I missed the brouhaha surrounding its 2005 publication, having appeared on the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom's "Top Ten Most Challenged Book List" from 2006-2010, reappearing in 2012, and - sadly - again as late as 2014. This is such a gentle book, and to imagine literature that celebrates the love and devotion of parents would ever appear on such a list is disheartening. This is a sweet book that talks of the desire to share a home and a family (I'll type the text in the comment section below for parents/grandparents to read for themselves if they're on the fence about the book.) The younger of my two sons is gay, has been in a committed and happy relationship with his partner for seven years, and should they eventually marry and decide to begin a family, it would be so painful to the heart of this mother to see his family shunned or ridiculed. I hope the authors have not experienced it since the birth of their own daughter, little Gemma, whom I suppose is about 8 years old now and feeling very loved and secure. Children are drawn to books about animals, there aren't too many animals cuter or funnier than penguins, and if you're a parent or grandparent who's searching for ways to begin opening your child's mind to the concept of the different types of families they'll encounter (or may be a part of!) along life's journey, as I myself have been, I think "And Tango Makes Three" is a nice place to start.