Robert, "an ordinary boy," doesn't really mind being followed home every day by hippopotami, but after 27 of them have piled up in their goldfish pond, his parents call in a witch to put a hippo-repellent spell on Robert. It works, and when Robert leaves school the next day "there wasn't a hippo in sight"--and only Kellogg's sunset scene reveals that instead, a parade of giraffes is following the happy Robert. It's such a familiar trick ending that you have to rely on Kellogg to provide the novelties; admittedly hippos are right up his alley--it's a state his people frequently seem to be striving for--but the contrast set up by their presence (and that of the "not very respectable" witch) in Robert's elegant home is, to us, almost as predictable.
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