15th February Hippopotamus Day

If you look at my Pinterest page for hippos you will see that hippos are quite a phenomenon in the world of children's books. They feature not only in traditional nonfiction books, but they are the main characters in narrative nonfiction which relate the lives of real-life hippos such as Fiona and Mzee. They are the stars of great novels such as Morris Lurie's The Twenty-Seventh Annual Hippopotamus Race, they feature in folktales such as those about a tug of war between and elephant and a hippo, they become the brunt of humour and even best friends when you see the series of books Duck and Hippo by Jonathan London and Andrew Joyner or those by Jeff Mack about  Hippo and Rabbit.

Find out about real hippos first:

• The Truth About Hippos by Maxwell Eaton III

• Hippos are Huge!  by Jonathan London

Learn about famous hippos like Fiona and Mzee:

Fiona is a hippopotamus that was born six years ago at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio. She was born prematurely and is famous for surviving. She now has quite a lot of books written about her.

• Saving Fiona  by Thane Maynard

• Fiona the Hippo  by Richard Cowdery

Owen is a baby hippo who was rescued after the  December 2004 tsunami. Villagers in Kenya worked tirelessly to rescue him and he became the best friend of a 130 year old tortoise named Mzee.

•  Owen and Mzee by Isabella Hatkoff

• Mama and Owen  by Marion Dane Bauer

• Mama by Jeanette Winter

Read folktales:

• Hot Hippo  by Mwenye Hadithi

• The Great Tug of War  by Beverley Naidoo

• Clever Tortoise  by Francesca Martin

• Tug of War  by Naomi Howarth

Then have fun reading stories such as these:

• There's a Hippo on the Roof Eating Cake  by Hazel Edwards and deborah Niland

• Happy Hippo  by Charles Santoso

• The First Hippo on the Moon by David Walliams and Tony Ross

• Zippo the Super Hippo  by Kes Gray and Nikki Dyson

• Hilda Must Be Dancing  by Karma Wilson and Suzanne Watts

• The Twenty-Seventh Annual African Hippopotamus race  by Morris Lurie

They even feature in art books. There is a small blue hippo, an ancient Egyptian relic named William  at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He has a book about him

• The Little Hippo by Geraldine Elschner