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The Hippo That Flew Reviewed By Conny Crisalli of Bookpleasures.com
- By Conny Withay
- Published September 17, 2012
- Childrens & Young Adults
Conny Withay
Reviewer Conny Withay:Operating her own business in office management since 1991, Conny is an avid reader and volunteers with the elderly playing her designed The Write Word Game. A cum laude graduate with a degree in art living in the Pacific Northwest, she is married with two sons, two daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren.
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Author: Zev Lewinson
Illustrator: Debi Coules
Publisher: Swordpen
ISBN: 978-0-9799653-4-0
Having a dream or goal and really, really wanting to achieve it is a noble task. Sometimes making that dream come true does not happen as expected. In Lev Lewinson’s The Hippo That Flew, the author writes about having hope and ambition.
This unnumbered but around
forty pages, over-sized paperback book has a colorful drawing of a
very happy hippopotamus on the front jacket. The back jacket has
simply five short reviews. Illustrator Debi Coules does a good job
depicting the detailed drawings, some which take up more than one
page. Besides a short biography on both author and writer with
childhood pictures, a copy of the original rough draft is included,
handwritten and scribbled on two pages. The happy go lucky book is
targeted toward preschool or younger and mentions what happens after
death so may be hard for some children to comprehend.
This tome is about young Wilbur, a big blue eyed hippopotamus who is convinced that one day he will fly. As a young hippo, his family and friends scold and mock him for thinking that a big, heavy animal like himself could actually fly. But all Wilbur does is dream and wish about the day when he can soar in the sky.
One of his ideas is to
make waxed feathers for wings. He straps them on and takes off but
the hot sun melts the wax and he falls to the ground and lands on his
cushy bottom. Not disappointed in his failure, he puts a huge sign up
on the school blackboard that says “I will fly” but still his
family and friends make fun of him.
As Wilbur gets older, he meets a beautiful hippo named Beverly and falls immediately in love with her. In no time, they marry and have three baby hippos. As the years pass and Wilbur still wants to fly, he grows old and gray, but still ponders about flight. When he dies and the Holy Hippo gives his eulogy, he says how Wilbur now has wings. In Heaven, the Voice comforts Wilbur by telling him he did succeed and now he can fly wherever he wants. Because of Wilbur’s vision and determination throughout his life, the Voice tells him he is “The Creator of Flight on Earth” and then joyously Wilbur takes off flying forever.
This story is innocuous to the point that it is positive about wanting to have dreams, goals and ambition, but it may be disconcerting to a young child that does not understand death, afterlife or Heaven.