Hippo Wants to Dance – a story about animals and emotions

Hippo wants to Dance, but this doesn’t make everyone else so happy. But then hippo stops dancing and she gets very sad. Another friend comes to the rescue.

This short animal story has lots of lessons about respecting others boundaries, and about doing what makes you happy.

Illustrated by Megan Andrews, Written by Sam Beckbessinger
Designed by Marisa Steyn with the help of the Book Dash participants in Cape Town on 5 March 2016.

 Excerpt from Hippo Wants to Dance 

Hippo wants to dance.
She twirls around and around
in a field, kicking her legs up high.

“Be careful! You nearly kicked me!”
says Meerkat, bathing his babies.
“Go dance somewhere else.”

< End of Excerpt >

See the full book by selecting the buttons below the post,

Or read along with the book here:

About Book Dash 

Book Dash gathers professional creatives – writers, illustrators, designers, editors – who volunteer to create high-quality children’s books that anyone can freely download, translate, print and distribute. Most of the work is done on a Book Dash day, when small teams work for over twelve straight hours, each producing a new book.

Why Book Dash?

Books purchased from publishers cost too much. In order to distribute more books for South African children, Book Dash participants work as publishers in a single day, having a book with no publishers mean the book will be a lot cheaper the only cost will be printing the books. With these, anyone can run sponsored prints and the finished books can be handed to children.

Every child should have a hundred books when they reach the age of five. that means handing down 600 million free books to South African children who probably could not afford to buy them, More children grow up not learning how to read and write well, and every day we lose more of these children. Let us not neglect these children and help them overcome poverty by first teaching them how to read and to enjoy the worlds that a book can open up.

See other books from Book Dash:

Sponsored Links:

Note – if you sign up through these links, it doesn’t cost you any extra, but FKB receives a small donation, which helps us move towards our aim of
FREE Hardcopies!  

All our posts are checked by Grammarly, the FREE online grammar checker (We still receive a donation even if you only sign up for the free account :-):

This site is hosted by Bluehost:

Leave a comment (it won’t be public) if you want help getting your own website cost-effectively.