PRINCESS HIPPOPOTAMUS

Princess Hippopotamus spends all day every day being the perfect princess. She figures that one day she will be a queen, and so the only way to become a good queen is to practice by being a perfect princess!

And Princess Hippopotamus never gets into the kind of trouble her brothers, Prince Wally and Prince Doozer, do - that is, until the day she throws a water balloon off the top of the tallest tower in the kingdom!

(Which unfortunately, lands right on Uncle Tutu's new and stylish hat!)

This playful book by storyteller Jennifer Pahl Otto, is perfect for reading aloud. The watercolors, by Kseniia Korniienko are delightful to see. Together, they celebrate the need we have for fun in our lives - all of us!

Mead-Hill website: www.mead-hill.com

About the Author

Jennifer Pahl Otto is a poet and storyteller who lives in Lansing, Michigan.

Jennifer grew up in a house where every room, every hallway, every staircase was lined from floor to ceiling with books. Her love of stories began there as a child, most especially while listening to her mother read Winnie the Pooh to her - again and again. Ever since, Jennifer has never stopped reading or loving children's literature.

Jennifer continues to create magical, whimsical stories for adults and children. She belongs to the Lansing Storytellers, the Ann Arbor Storytelling Guild, and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She travels regionally, in response to the many invitations she receives to share her stories with others.

About the Illustrator

Kseniia Korniienko is a Ukraine native living in Southern California. Her imaginative sketches and watercolors regularly appear in a wide variety of exhibition settings. They also frequently appear at charity events to which Kseniia is pleased to lend support.

At the core of Kseniia's hundreds of watercolors and thousands of sketches is the clear goal of helping provide people with moments of joy in a too-often dismissive, problematic world. A heart and a soul are everywhere evident in the work, giving hints not only of the world as seen through the eyes of the artist, but of new interpretations of that world, interpretations that clearly transform the everyday into something rather unexpected, some-thing in fact extraordinary.

Not waiting around for the appearance of some ''Mystic Muse, '' Kseniia makes it a daily habit to just sit down at her drawing board and get to work, where, she believes, "The Muse comes during the work."

Unfailingly cheerful, Kseniia's work inspires positive and constructive intentions in viewers, clearly inspiring them to go out in the world and do something newer and better.