Butter or Sour Cream?

Yippee! Baked potato weather has returned to Texas, if only for a day. All week I've been teaching kiddos that hippos have no corners. Hippos are shaped like baked potatoes, and everybody can draw a baked potato! Diving boards do have corners, but they are pretty easy to draw with straight lines. It's really easy to draw a hippo doing a flip off the diving board since they spin around so fast that it's almost like a scribble. You have to practice to do a flip. You have to practice to control the lines you draw, too. You should always make sure you won't land on anyone before you go off the diving board. You should always look out for crocodiles in the river, too. Crocodiles have lots of straight lines, and very sharp teeth. You can't see their feet if they are in the river. If you can see their feet, you should run away FAST. The good news is that crocodiles can't climb the diving board ladder or the trees by the riverbank. You will definitely need a hippo gray Crayola marker, a bright green marker, a jungle-ly lime green marker, and turquoise for the river. After all that diving you will need a mint green marker because everyone likes mint chocolate chip ice cream cones after swimming. And then you do have to ponder whether hippos wear bathing suits or goggles, use snorkles and flippers, drink Gatorade, or throw frisbees. From a health and color scheme standpoint, you have to worry that hippos will forget to use sunscreen. But back to the baked potato! Everyone knows that hippos have fat pear heads with little green grape ears and big cheerio nostrils. They have hamburger feet, but hot dog tails. None of this makes me crave a fresh spinach salad with celery and zucchini. I WANT the baked potato and the ice cream! I don't have to explain what happens when I teach pizza color wheels with complementary color pepperoni for a week at a time. This is why art teachers of a certain age tend to be built like papier-mache covered balloons.

Check your library's new book shelf for:

The new hippos / by Landström, Lena.
Stockholm; New York : R. & S. ; Andover : 2003.
Subjects Hippopotamus -- Juvenile fiction.

Neighbors -- Juvenile fiction

ISBN: 9129658233 :

Description: 32 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 25 cm.

Summary: When a mother hippo and her little hippo arrive at the hippo village on the edge of the river, they do not receive a warm welcome. Accepting new neighbors is sometimes hard.

Genre: Children's stories -- Pictorial works.