KIRKUS REVIEW
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.
