Saving Puff

An inspiring childrens story based on an actual Atlantic puffin rescue effort.

Every year in late August and early September in the town of Vestmannaeyjar (VEST-man-naey-jar), on Heimaey (HAY-mah-ay) Island, Iceland, hundreds of children and their parents spend nights searching for stranded baby puffins, called pufflings. The rescue group is known as the Puffling Patrol. Its tradition of saving young puffins likely started in the early 1900s, when electricity began lighting the town. Pufflings take their first flights at night to conceal themselves from seagulls and other predators. When they instinctively leap out toward the moon’s light, they catch wind currents and coast down to the ocean where they will live. But Vestmannaeyjar’s lights confuse some pufflings and they veer in the town’s direction and land there instead, without the strength to take off again. They become stranded and need help to reach the water. Some of these pufflings are underweight, and must be fed and cared for until they are big and strong enough to survive at sea.

This is the charming story of how an Icelandic girl named Emma, who on her very first Puffling Patrol rescues “Puff,” a small puffling not quite ready to fly on its own. Puff is Emmas constant companion as she cares and feeds it until it has the strength to fly, and she releases it over a sea cliff to join the thousands of other puffins on the rocks below. Backmatter describes the natural history of puffins, as well as challenges to their existence through hunting and habitat loss.