It’s a picture book that starts to introduce young children to literature’s use of tangible symbols to represent intangible ideas. It tells us about a hippo who has a big, black, heavy block that she’s been carrying around for quite some time. Each day she drags it with her to the park where she sits on it. Then along comes a happy, dancing alligator surrounded by a cloud of butterflies, who sits with her day after day. When invited to the ocean, our pig friend is concerned that her block is too heavy to carry that far, but her new alligator friend says he and his butterflies can help. Along the way, and during their time beside the sea, hippo tells about an old friend she misses, who has gone away, and finds that her block is shrinking. She says she’ll always have it, but alligator says he’ll help carry it when necessary.