In our ever-expanding society, many people get certain traits or ways of thinking based on something from popular culture. Whether it's a movie like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," television show like "Adventure Time," or something else entirely, people always seem to draw connections between them and the real world and apply what they have learned in those forms of media to real life.

One of the best examples of this, in my opinion, comes from books. Reading is almost always a required skill to have in our society and, therefore, everyone will most likely read some form of written literature and acquire a new way of thinking and viewing the world. While a lot of people would say that works or novels such as "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Catcher in the Rye," "Romeo and Juliet," etc. change the way they view everything in life, I happen to think of something a little more simple.

I have always found that in most groups of friends or colleagues, there are always one or two people with the ability and skill to make people smile and/or laugh. Some people might call these people “class clowns” or “goofballs,” but in reality, they are actually one of the bravest and most confident people within that group of people. In my humble opinion, I am the goofball in the majority of friend groups that I am a part of, and it is mostly thanks to the book "Tacky the Penguin" by Helen Lester.

Early on in my life, I was a shy kid. Communicating with people was hard and I was always too afraid to talk to people. Not to mention the thought of rejection and discrimination because of my shyness scared me even more. When you are at the age of four or five, you can sometimes start to think that being different is a bad thing or that being weird and wacky is what makes people afraid of you. For me, these ideas were all too stressful. But then everything changed when "Tacky the Penguin" came into my life.

The book is the story of Tacky, a penguin, who is eccentric and strange compared to all the other penguins. Instead of walking in the neat and straight lines that the other penguins honored so dearly, Tacky would dance and sing and simply express joy in the way he thought was fun. The others penguins shunned Tacky for being different, but when penguin hunters come to cause trouble, Tacky’s “different” way of thinking and going about things managed to not only drive the penguin hunters away, but also to show that being different and unique can help people too.

"Tacky the Penguin" changed a lot in my life. Tacky taught me how to be myself and how being different and a little weird can help people in ways they would not expect. For the first time in my life, I was content with who I was. Even as I grew up, I still remembered Tacky’s lesson. I made school more fun, I brought new approaches to problems and I made more friends who respected me for who I was. "Tacky the Penguin" may be an unconventional book, but it’s what made me, well, me.