This Is Not My Hat

Awards:

• Bank Street College Irma Black Award Honor Book (Winner)
• Caldecott Medal (Winner)
• Kate Greenaway Medal (CILIP) (Winner)
• Kentucky Bluegrass Award (Winner)
• UKLA Book Award (Winner)
• Bank Street College Irma Black Award (Short-listed)
• Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award, Picture Book of the Year (Short-listed)

Reviews:

Any picture book needs to bridge the worlds of adult and child, whether they are the tucker and the tucked in or the experienced reader and the sounder-outer. The negotiations between what grown-ups and children want, and between what adults are familiar with and children are still apprehending, provide the tension that makes children’s books possible. Whether puttering along with Little Tug on the surface or swimming with the fish in the dark below, we’re all in this water together. ~The New York Times Book Review

This is, quite simply, an outstanding book—and that ain’t no fish tale. ~Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)

Simplicity is key in both text and illustrations. The black underwater provides the perfect background for the mostly gray-toned fish and seaweed while the monochromatic palette strips the artwork down to essential, yet exquisite design. Movement is indicated with a trail of small white bubbles. This not-to-be-missed title will delight children again and again. ~School Library Journal (starred review)

Klassen’s authorial debut, I WANT MY HAT BACK (2011), became one of the surprise picture-book hits of the year, and while it’s tempting to see this follow-up as a sequel, it’s really only related in its hat-theft theme, animal characters, deadpan humor, and a suggestively dark conclusion. . . . The simple, dramatic tension and macabre humor that’s right at a kid’s level of deviousness mesh splendidly with Klassen’s knack for tiny, telling details and knockout page turns. Who knew hat thievery was such a bottomless well? ~Booklist (starred review)

Klassen excels at using pictures to tell the parts of the story his unreliable narrators omit or evade. ~Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Klassen combines spare text and art to deliver no small measure of laughs in another darkly comic haberdashery whodunit...Hats off! ~Kirkus Reviews (starred review)