I was worried about the whole "go berserk" aspect, because they have a tendency to do that at bed time, but the book did not give them any inspirations towards naughtiness. So I read the story to her and Errol in my best library-story-time-holding-up-the-book-to-show-the-pictures style and they sat attentively at my feet for the entire thing. I found that most interesting because I had never read a story to either of them before. She sat up prettily at my feet and looked at me expectantly. I turned off the television (no more doggies, hurray! thought the cats) and took the book from her. At 10 pm I announced we should go to bed, and was expounding on the schedule for the rest of the week when Molly went over to the shelf and began to pull this book out. Far-fetched, you say? I had been enjoying my day off doing internet things on my tablet whilst watching a Pitbulls and Parolees marathon on Animal Planet, my two cats sleeping by my side. Last night I had an interesting experience - my cat requested this book as a bed time story. But the gripping story with its symmetric addition and subtraction of hippos does not make up for the deeply flawed and clumsy literal portrayal of the actual number of hippos going berserk. Sandra Boynton does a masterful job of pulling us into this frenetic hippo world. so they really are trying to hold it together rather than "playing with great delight." This suggests a class difference amongst hippos that is being ignored as the author exclaims that "ALL the hippos go berserk!" (emphasis mine) in the plot's climax. when the hippos are going berserk, it would be inappropriate for them to join in the frenzy. How is an infant supposed to get a leg up in this crazy kind of world?Īdditionally, 9 hippos come to work the party as servers. This makes it difficult for me to distinguish whether there are two hippos or one. Additionally, with some of the bigger numbers (e.g., 7 or 8), hippos are often portrayed in pairs where one hippo occludes another. but that is not the case! The first hippo, I will refer to him as the host hippo, is almost always pictured along with the new hippos! So when there are 3 hippos at the door, the host hippo is there to greet them - thus there are actually 4 hippos portrayed! The host hippo is almost always pictured and throws off the hippo count on each page.
You might imagine that the pictures should show 1 hippo then 2 then 3 then 4. and ultimately felt disappointed that not all the hippos go berserk. But I just found some inconsistencies between the text and pictures that were difficult to resolve. This review is so hard for me to write not just because I'm pre-literate but also because I really wanted to like the book.
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