The Preston family of Wildwood worked for years to plan, write, illustrate and publish a book called “The Traveling Hippo.”
The activity book helps children remember and cherish memories made during family vacations.
Joy, 52, and her husband, Scott, 55, wrote the book, and Scott and the couple’s 18-year-old daughter, Lilly, drew the illustrations.
Connor, the couple’s 21-year-old son, is credited as the “midnight joker” in the book for providing constructive feedback and encouragement during the late nights the family worked on the project. He also helps run the book’s social media accounts and edits promotional videos, Joy said.
Joy said creating “The Traveling Hippo” brought the family closer together.
“Everybody was weighing in and adding extra layers and components to it,” she said. “Everybody had things they contributed and helped elevate it. That was a really big part of everybody working together. It was a lot of fun to hear everybody’s ideas and see everything come to life.”
Similar to the Christmas-time tradition “Elf on the Shelf,” where families read a storybook and then play a hide-and-seek game with a toy elf, “The Traveling Hippo” helps families commemorate vacations with a stuffed animal hippo. Parents are encouraged to read the book with their children the night before leaving on a vacation and then fill in the travel log in the back of the book with details and memories from the trip.
“The Traveling Hippo” book, plate and stuffed hippo.
The book follows a group of six animals and an alien, called the Seven Ancients, as they embark on a trip of their own. The problem is, Scott said, that the Ancients often forget what they did on their fun trips, so they recruit the Traveling Hippo to help them remember.
Lilly said the stuffed hippo was inspired by her childhood road trips, when a small silicone hippo toy named “Ghub Ghub” would be placed on the car’s dashboard. The family knew Scott was driving too fast when the hippo would go flying off the dashboard.
The hippo’s name was coined by Connor when he was young, and Joy admitted she had no idea where he got the idea for it.
“It’s a very special book, and it’s something I wish my family had when I was younger because we’ve done a lot of trips, and looking back on them, I have a few pictures, maybe, but (since creating “The Traveling Hippo”) it has been so cool to see what we wrote about the trips,” Lilly said. “It’s just special, having all the memories in one place. I haven’t seen any books like it, and I think kids would enjoy it.”
Scott said the family introduced the book to more than 100 children at Uthoff, Fairway and Kehrs Mill elementary schools in the Rockwood School District.
Connor and Lilly attended Rockwood schools. Connor graduated from Eureka High School in 2023, and Lilly graduated from Eureka High in May.
“I think they all loved the concept and the idea, and they all seemed to be excited about travel,” Joy said of the elementary students. “They really liked all the different characters. Some of the kids were like, ‘Oh, I like the giraffe,’ or ‘I like the flamingo,’ so I think they liked that there were different characters that they could relate to or be excited about.”
While the Prestons had floated the idea of a book about travel for many years, it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone under a lockdown that the family finally put pen to paper. Scott, who currently works in the insurance industry, worked as a graphic designer years ago and initially set out to create a children’s book with digital illustrations.
“I sat down and went, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so rusty,’” he said. “So, we started with sketches with pencil, then we’d ink it out, and if it was something that Lilly could do, she wanted to do it. I sketched. She markered.”
Lilly said she liked drawing with markers the best and wasn’t particularly inclined to create illustrations on the computer. All the book’s illustrations were hand-drawn and digitally scanned to format the book’s pages.
As the family wrote the story and revised it, Scott said it became clear the book needed a narrator to explain who the Seven Ancients are. Joy came up with the idea of the bird “Hammy,” based on actor and St. Louis native Jon Hamm.
“We chose him as a narrator because of all the philanthropic things he does in St. Louis and beyond St. Louis,” Joy said. “That was really important to us. Also, Hammy is a fun name.”
Lilly said Connor was extremely important during the revision process for the book.
“He’s a perfectionist, and he’s very particular,” she said.
Connor Preston holds the original hippo (Ghub Ghub) that traveled on family trips.
The family often worked late into the night on the book, since Scott and Joy have full-time jobs. Joy works in sales.
“(Connor) was always downstairs at midnight, giving last-minute critiques and helping out with the storyline,” Scott said. “He was a big critic of everything, which was really helpful.”
The family is selling the book with a plush hippo for $75 or the book without the stuffed animal for $45. The book may be ordered at thetravelinghippo.com.
The family also is selling “Traveling Hippo” trading cards on the website, and Scott said they will soon sell baseball hats.
Scott said the books are ready to be shipped, but the family is waiting on the stuffed animal hippos to complete the orders.
With “The Traveling Hippo” finally complete after years of work, Joy said the family is already thinking about what the next book could be about. The last two pages of their book tease what the next one may be about, she said.
Lilly will be joining her brother at the University of Missouri-Columbia this fall. Connor is currently studying engineering, and Lilly is uncertain what she wants to study.
She said she wants to take classes that will help her write, illustrate and promote future Preston books.
“I’m still not 100 percent sure on my exact major, but I’m looking into some majors that could help me with the book, like graphic design or digital storytelling,” she said.
For behind-the-scenes looks at the making of “The Traveling Hippo,” check out the Prestons’ Instagram account, “the.travelinghippo.”