Tuesday Storytime: Hippos!

And before you ask, yes there are LOTS of hippopotamus stories.  So many.  Here are my favorite three:

The Hippo-NOT-amus
Tony and Jan Payne, illustrations by Guy Parker-Rees
ISBN: 0439564182
Boisterous colors and compositions enliven an already silly story about accepting who you are.

Portly is a baby hippo (love the name) who is sick of boring lying in the water, and boring old grass to eat.  He's going out into the world to see whether any other animals have it better.  By the end of the story, he's not a hippo any longer, he's a hippo-ger-ele-bat-onoceros, tottering around on stilts, with bananas hanging from each foot, and wooden horns and a vine trunk hanging from his nose.  How he gets to that point is the fun of the story, and I love that the parents are kind and accepting of their kid's explorations of his identity.


Hilda Must Be Dancing
Karma Wilson, illustrated by Suzanne Watts
ISBN: 0689847882
Vibrant but soft-edged paintings feature lots of purples and blues.

Hilda Hippo loves to dance, but her moves are causing earthquakes and giant messes.  Her jungle friends try to get her into various sedate hobbies: knitting, singing... until they try swimming, which she interprets as water ballet, to her and everyone elses' newfound happiness.  Really cute, and fairly short for the story involved.  Lots of dancy noises and onomatopoeic words tho.


The Hiccupotamus
Aaron Zenz
ISBN: 9780761456223
Zany fun with exaggerated animals in primary colors, with expressive bodies and faces.

Our unnamed hippo hero has a horrid case of the hiccups, which is causing havoc.  (I'll stop now.)  In desperation, after several messy (and tongue-twisting) accidents, his friends get together to cure him, to no avail, until the hiccups finally fade out of their own accord - just in time to spring up somewhere else!  Seriously difficult to get through, because of the made-up combined singsong words.  An example: "She chased him toward a centipede/Pouring new cemetipede/He hic'ed by accidentipede/And tripped the elephantipede."  Sheesh.  Despite the challenge, it's great fun to read and to see the kids giggle at the silly situations and sillier language.