A great young kid's book should have the following elements: a tellable and exciting story, wonderful images, some humour and maybe even a lesson (eg moral, vocab, learning about something new).  

A Huddle Of Hippos is a gorgeous full-colour storybook that hits all those notes. It's locally written and illustrated, and the author, Julia Richman, is my ex-editor's sister. Back in my magazine days, before I became an editor, Julia's sister Leigh was my wonderful editor, and one can tell that good words run in this family as this is a fantastic story. 

The book follows Sam on a safari trip, and readers are introduced to collective nouns of animals on each page, for example a cackle of hyenas, and a journey of giraffes. The book reminded me of going to the game reserve, and never knowing the collective noun for animals I see, making this book quite enlightening for me too (did you know that it's a stand of flamingoes?)

The book is 32 pages long, and has an activity page at the back. It's available at bookstores for around R140, and it's so worth sharing this beautiful and fun story with your kids.