Mr.Popper’s Penguins（Ⅰ）

Richard and Florence Atwater

主人公波普先生是个什么样的人呢？阅读下文，你能勾画出你脑海中的波普先生吗？

It was an afternoon in late September.In the pleasant little city of Stillwater,Mr.Popper,the house painter,was going home from work.

He was carrying his1)buckets,his ladders,and his boards so that he had rather a hard time moving along.He was2)spatteredhere and there with paint and3)calcimine,and there were bits of wallpaper clinging to his hair and whiskers,for he was rather an untidy man.

The children looked up from their play to smile at him as he passed,and the housewives,seeing him,said,“Oh dear,there goes Mr.Popper.I must remember to ask John to have the house painted over in the spring.”

No one knew what went on inside of Mr.Popper’s head,and no one guessed that he would one day be the most famous person in Stillwater.

He was a dreamer.Even when he was busy4)smoothingdown the paste on the wallpaper,or painting the outside of other people’s houses,he would forget what he was doing.Once he had painted three sides of a kitchen green,and the other side yellow.The housewife,instead of being angry and making him do it over,had liked it so well that she had made him leave it that way.And all the other housewives,when they saw it,admired it too,so that pretty soon everybody in Stillwater had two-colored kitchens.

The reason why Mr.Popper was so absent-minded was that he was always dreaming about far-away countries.He had never been out of Stillwater.Not that he was unhappy.He had a nice little house of his own,a wife whom he loved dearly,and two children,named Janie and Bill.Still,it would have been nice,he often thought,if he could have seen something of the world before he met Mrs.Popper and settled down.He had never hunted tigers in India,or climbed the peaks of the Himalayas,or dived for pearls in the South Seas.Above all,he had never seen the Poles.

That was what he regretted most of all.He had never seen those great shining white5)expansesof ice and snow.How he wished that he had been a scientist,instead of a house painter in Stillwater,so that he might have joined some of the great polar expeditions.Since he could not go,he was always thinking about them.

1) bucketn.（有提梁的）桶

2) spatterv.溅；洒

3) calciminen.墙粉

4) smoothv.使平整；使平坦

5) expansen.广阔

九月末的一个午后，静水小镇显得舒适宜人。油漆匠波普先生正在收工回家的路上。

他扛着水桶、梯子、木板，真是举步维艰，身上还东一块、西一块地溅满了油漆和石灰水，头发和胡子上也粘着壁纸的残屑。波普先生实在是个不修边幅的人。

经过街道的时候，路边嬉戏的孩童会抬起头来对他微笑；而家庭主妇们看到他时也会说：“噢，那不是波普先生嘛!我得记着叫约翰在春天把整间屋子漆完。”

没有人知道波普先生的脑海里究竟想着什么，也没有人会想到有朝一日他会变成静水镇上最出名的人物。

波普先生是个梦想家。就算在他忙着糊平壁纸，或是帮人粉刷房屋外墙时，他也会忘了自己到底在干什么。有一次他将厨房的三面墙壁漆成绿色以后，居然把剩下的一面漆成黄色，而女主人竟也没有生气地叫他重漆，反而非常喜欢他把房子搞成这样，还叫他保留原样不必再处理了。其他家庭主妇在看了这种式样之后也都很欣赏，于是没过多久，静水镇家家户户都拥有了一间双色厨房。

波普先生之所以如此心不在焉，是因为他老憧憬着那些遥远的地方。他从未离开过静水镇，但这并不是说他过得不快乐。他自己拥有一幢温暖的小屋，有挚爱的妻子，还有一双儿女，女孩叫珍妮，男孩叫比尔。尽管如此，他还是常常想着，如果他能在认识波普太太并安家立业之前，目睹这世界上其他一些什么特别的事物，那该有多么美好。他从未到印度去猎过虎，也未曾攀登过喜马拉雅山，更没有去南太平洋采集过珍珠，他甚至没有机会去看看地球的两极。

这真是让波普最感到遗憾的事，他从未见过那无边无际的闪亮冰山和皑皑白雪。他多么希望自己不是一个静水镇上的小油漆匠，而是一名科学家，那样他就可以加入伟大的极地探险了。正是因为这一切根本不能实现，所以他只能整日空想。

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理查德·阿特沃特是一名报纸专栏作家。有一次，理查德与两个女儿一起观看了一部关于极地的影片，这部影片触发了他创作《波普先生的企鹅》一书的灵感，没想到书稿还未完成，理查德便一病不起。他的妻子弗洛伦斯接手了他的工作，并使这本书于1938 年得以正式出版。1939 年，该书荣获纽伯瑞儿童文学奖银奖。