The Turtle and the Hippopotamus was written by Kate Banks and illustrated by Tomek Bogacki. It was published by Rebus (?) in 2002.
A turtle has to cross the river for food (reeds). She’s scared to cross because there’s a big hippo. The turtle tries many things to get across until it lands on the back of the hippo. They become friends after that.
The story in The Turtle and the Hippopatamus is just variation after variation on how the turtle will get across the river.
Towards the end the turtle lands on the hippo’s back but it looks like she’s going to land in the hippo’s mouth... I suppose this is the climax of the story.
If you want to read this story smoothly to a child, it would probably be best to read over the book once since it’s written in a very unusual way. For certain key words (eg: hippo, ants, river), there are squares with illustrations that represent what should be said. The answers are all at the bottom, but it can get tiresome to try to figure out some of these drawings... but it’s nice that the author is trying to get children to participate.
The text is designed around this unusual format and I found it confusing as to where the text starts sometimes.
I’m guessing that this book might work well in a big group where you could get the children to say whatever pictures are next. It would also work well with one or two children...