I Want My Hat Back

Starred review from July 4, 2011
In his first outing as an author, Klassen's (Cats' Night Out) words and artwork are deliberately understated, with delectable results. Digitally manipulated ink paintings show a slow-witted bear asking half a dozen forest animals if they've seen his hat. Unadorned lines of type, printed without quotation marks or attributions, parallel the sparse lines Klassen uses for the forest's greenery. Most of the answers the bear gets are no help ("What's a hat?" one animal asks), but the rabbit's answer arouses suspicion: "I haven't seen any hats anywhere. I would not steal a hat. Don't ask me any more questions." In a classic double-take, the bear doesn't notice the hat on the rabbit's head until several pages on: "I have seen my hat," he realizes, wide-eyed. Readers with delicate sensibilities may object to the implied conclusion ("I would not eat a rabbit," the bear says stoutly, his hat back on his head, the forest floor showing signs of a scuffle), but there is no objecting to Klassen's skillful characterizations; though they're simply drawn and have little to say, each animal emerges fully realized. A noteworthy
debut. Ages 4â8.

August 1, 2011

Gr 1-3-Readers may be too young to know Nixon's famous line, "I am not a crook," but they'll surely figure out that someone here is not telling the truth. Bear has lost his hat and asks various creatures if they have seen it, with pronounced civility. Snake goes offtrack (and will also throw inattentive listeners offtrack) by announcing he's seen a blue and round hat. Rabbit vigorously denies having seen anything like it, despite evidence to the contrary. Armadillo asks, "What is a hat?" Bear is flung into despair until a young deer asks, "What does your hat look like?" Bear starts to describe it and immediately realizes he has seen it. The following page is painted red with anger. Readers realize they have seen it, too! Bear confronts the culprit and what happens next is a matter of interpretation. Violence is implied, but only indirectly. The Chinese ink illustrations are understated and stylized, and the pages are a natural sandy hue throughout. The dialogue is not in quotations but in contrasting colors. Wisps of grass, rocks, small branches, and specks of dirt compose the setting. Read aloud, this story will offer many sublime insights into how young readers comprehend an illustrated text that leaves out vital information, and will leave young sleuths reeling with theories about what just happened.-Sara Lissa Paulson, American Sign Language and English Lower School PS 347, New York City

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2011

Klassen's coy effort combines spare illustration, simple, repetitive text and a "payback's a bear" plot.

A somber, sepia-toned bear longs for his missing hat and questions a series of forest animals about its whereabouts. While everyone denies seeing it, a rabbit (sporting, readers will note, a pointy red chapeau) protests a bit too indignantly. Ten pages on, as the bear describes his hat for a solicitous deer, realization hits: "I HAVE SEEN MY HAT." The accompanying illustration shows the indignant bear suffused in the page's angry red. There's the subsequent dash and confrontation, followed by bear in hat and rabbit—well, nowhere to be seen. Klassen's ink-and-digital creatures, similarly almond-eyed and mouth-less, appear stiff and minimalist against creamy white space. Foliage is suggested with a few ink strokes (though it's quite bashed-up after rabbit goes missing). The text type, New Century Schoolbook, intentionally evokes the visually comfy, eminently readable design of 1960s children's primers. Font colors correlate with the animals' dialogue as well as the illustrations' muted color palette, and the four-sentence denials (first rabbit's, then bear's) structurally echo each other. Indubitably hip, this will find plenty of admirers. Others might react to a certain moral vapidity. And the littlest ones will demand to know where the heck that rabbit went.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011
Grades K-2 Klassen, who illustrated Caroline Stutson's Cats' Night Out (2010), pens his first story in this odd, and oddly charming, picture book. A bummed-out bear asks if other animals have seen his lost hat. The fox knows nothing. Neither does the frog. Or the rabbit who is wearing a pointy red hat. No luck with the turtle, snake, or armadillo either. Kids will probably be squirming in their seats at this point, just dying to tell the bear what he missed three page turns ago, but then a reindeer jogs Bear's memory by asking what the hat looks like (red, pointy). He runs back to confront the rabbit, and when a squirrel asks him later if he has seen a hat-wearing rabbit, Bear is all innocence: I haven't seen any rabbits anywhere. I would not eat a rabbit. Don't ask me any more questions. This is, obviously, a dark turn, but there is no denying that the devious humor is right at a child's level. He is a bear, after all; we should be happy he didn't gobble up the rest of the cast.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2012
A bear has lost his red hat. He questions a fox, frog, rabbit, turtle, snake, and armadillo before giving up. "What's the matter?" asks Deer, knocking free a recent memory (something that young readers are sure to have noticed) and leading the bear to a red-hot conclusion. Klassen's animation and design skills are evident on every page of this sly, subversive tale.

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

November 1, 2011
Klassen's animation and design skills are evident on every page in this sly, subversive tale. A bear has lost his red hat and is on the search. Each critter he questions -- fox, frog, rabbit, turtle, snake, and armadillo -- has the same dead-pan eyes, the whites of which are highlighted by the cream-colored background surrounding the sepia-hued animals. These first encounters all take place on the left-hand page, with repeatd dialogue until the bear, giving up, finally falls flat on his back in bereavement for his missing hat. Here his eyes beseech the heavens. At the page turn, a deer looks into those eyes, asking, "What's the matter?" This simple question knocks free a recent memory (one that the young reader is just waiting to be recovered) and leads the bear to a red-hot conclusion (and hot-red background color), spurring his race back to the thief. Adults and older children will chuckle mordantly at rabbit's sudden disappearance, while young children might actually wonder, with Squirrel, where the rabbit has gone. robin l. smith

(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)