A peek at a sublime weekday lunch gathering of Hippo Park friends with editorial director Jill Davis, in honor of our one-year mark and Hippo Park‘s first book of 2024, Pepper and Me.

It’s been just a bit over a year since we launched Hippo Park. Ta-da! What a joyful time it’s been. Our very first list of books launched in Fall 2022 and they were received with giggles and grabs–both by kids and their adults. By educators, too!  How grateful we feel that our many authors and illustrators were willing to take a chance on a young new publisher! The same can be said about our staff, all of whom were up for an adventure and ready to take a chance. Thank you to everyone who made the first year of Hippo Park Books such a joy.

We hosted a cozy celebratory lunch at our beautiful NYC office for our Hippo Park friends from Kirkus Reviews, the Society of Illustrators, PS 87, and The New York Times. Guests were greeted with a card from our Hippo Park conversation deck and treated to yummy Chinese take-out. We even had an author drop in–Beatrice Alemagna joined our small party via Zoom from her home near Fontainebleau, France, and told us about creating her very special book coming in January, called Pepper & Me. It’s about a girl and the scab that bothers her so much, but which she misses when it falls off. Beatrice took us on a mini tour of her beautiful studio and showed us a brand new piece of artwork from a mysterious book. So exciting.

Our motto: “we take silly seriously” has continued to emerge with the acquisition of exciting new titles and plans for next year. As we head into 2024 with books like Pepper & Me, I feel proud and more committed than ever to the books we are bringing out. I hope ours are the books kids can’t resist picking up! If that’s true, we’re doing our job.

With warmest wishes and gratitude,
Jill

Pepper and Me (The New York Times Best Children’s Book of 2024)

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Learn about the inspiration behind Pepper & Me in this thank-you letter from author Beatrice Alemagna.