Origin
In 1999, Phoebe came across a story that she couldn’t get out of her head: The Blue Faience Hippopotamus, by Joan Grant. She realized that it would make a wonderful picture book.
Phoebe wrote and rewrote the story many times until it was just right. She put it aside for a while to create Jillian Jiggs and the Great Big Snow, but she couldn’t forget it: “I don’t remember ever being this excited about any story I’ve ever worked on. I don’t know what it is, but this story moves me so deeply.”
Eventually Phoebe realized that she would not be able to illustrate The Blue Hippopotamus herself, and award-winning artist Joanne Fitzgerald agreed to take it on. Phoebe sent all her sketches for Joanne to use for inspiration. Her final illustrations for this book were nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Illustration.
Fun Facts
“When I was a teenager, I worked part time in the gift shop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was a small ceramic turquoise hippo sold there. It had lotus blossoms painted on its back and was a reproduction of an ancient Egyptian model. I can see this little toy hippo vividly in my mind’s eye. My mother was fascinated with Ancient Egypt and a bit of this fascination has rubbed off on me.”
One of Phoebe’s many versions of this story was set in British Columbia and featured a bear instead of a hippopotamus!