There's a hippopotamus somewhere out there

Ben has never received such a strange letter before: it looks like it came straight from the era of Sherlock Holmes, and it was delivered by... bees! In the envelope, sealed with sealing wax, is a small invitation card with the signature: "Come in for an hour." Come in? To the Garner-Gee Museum? But Ben has never even heard of it! And the only thing on the Internet is its ancient website - as if the museum had long been closed. And in fact, it may soon cease to exist. Only Ben can save it - with the help of the magical exhibits of the museum itself, which do not want to end up in the trash or gather dust in the storerooms of some super-modern scientific complex. A series of discoveries awaits the 10-year-old hero, one more amazing than the other. Including the solution to his father's family secret. The detective story, invented and illustrated by Helen Cooper (born in 1963), is written in the spirit of Gothic novels. The young hero will have to figure out why the mysterious invitation was brought to him, what secrets the museum halls hide, and most importantly - why he saw a hippopotamus in his dream. Helen Cooper's books have been translated into 26 languages and have received many awards, but have never been published in Russian before. The writer and artist has twice been awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal, awarded by the British Library Association. Helen lives in Oxford in a house with a concert grand piano and loves to make sketches in museums. From such sketches, the novel "Somewhere There Is a Hippopotamus" was born. For Russian-speaking readers, it is opened by famous translators Galina Gimon and Olga Bukhina. For middle school age.