Veronica is your average hippopotamus with a big dream: she wants to become famous. But with so many hippopotamuses wallowing in the cool mud and swimming and splashing in the clear water along the riverbank, it’s more difficult to stand out than one might think. So Veronica does what any determined young mammal would do: she sets off to find her fortune in the nearby pink-and-white city. If she were the only hippopotamus, everyone would surely take notice, and it would be marvelous—or would it?

Many miles from the cool, muddy riverbank, the men and women of the pink-and-white city stare at Veronica, bump into her with their cars, and shout angrily when she steps on their toes. In the city, Veronica is not only conspicuous—she is very much in the way! Mishaps befall her at every turn. While taking a curbside nap, she is issued a warning for stopping traffic.  When she bathes in the public fountain, the townspeople cluck unsympathetically. At the farmers’ market, Veronica is unused to city manners and helps herself happily to an entire cart of fresh, delicious vegetables—including the paper bags. When a policeman is called to capture the hungry hippo, Veronica decides that the city is not the place for a hippopotamus. But the hustle and bustle of city life is not the only surprise to come from Veronica’s big journey. When she returns home to the riverbank, she finds her dream has come true after all. From that day forward, Veronica is famous among the hippopotamuses, who gather each day at sunset to hear about her adventures in the pink-and-white city.

Originally published in the 1960s, Veronica by Caldecott Medal–winning author and illustrator Roger Duvoisin is the most recent addition to the Bodleian Library’s newly minted children’s book imprint. For little readers with big dreams, it offers a timeless tale of the surprising places those dreams may take us.

A Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book of 2018 (Outstanding Merit selection) • Finalist, 2018 Ohioana Book Award

Long before she wrote The House of Dies Drear, M. C. Higgins, the Great, and many other children’s classics, Virginia Hamilton grew up among her extended family near Yellow Springs, Ohio, where her grandfather had been brought as a baby through the Underground Railroad. The family stories she heard as a child fueled her imagination, and the freedom to roam the farms and woods nearby trained her to be a great observer. In all, Hamilton wrote forty-one books, each driven by a focus on “the known, the remembered, and the imagined”—particularly within the lives of African Americans.

Over her thirty-five-year career, Hamilton received every major award for children’s literature. This new biography gives us the whole story of Virginia’s creative genius, her passion for nurturing young readers, and her clever way of crafting stories they’d love.