We've Got to Stop Meeting Like This! The Red Hat by David Teague

BILLY HIGHTOWER LIVES ATOP THE WORLD'S TALLEST BUILDING.

IT WAS THE WIND AND BILLY HIGHTOWER . . . UNTIL ONE DAY A LADDER APPEARED, FOLLOWED BY MEN IN HARD HATS AND THEN...

A GIRL. SHE WORE A RED HAT.

Life at the top is hard. Well... lonely. And when the appropriately named Billy Hightower spots the girl in the red hat, he is determined to catch her eye.

He shouts his hello, but the whirling wind around their skyscrapers carry his words away as if they were whispers.

Billy crafts a carefully composed note:

Hi,
My name is Billy Hightower. I like your hat.

He sends his message to her on the wings of a paper airplane, but the wind takes it off before it reaches her. He attaches it to a red kite and sends it sailing across the distance between the two towers,  but the wind snatches it away just as the girl reaches for it, losing her own red hat to the wind as well. Desperately, Billy grabs a red blanket and holding onto the corners, tries to parasail to the top of the girl's building.

THE WIND RAGED. IT BLEW ACROSS THE BOULEVARD, TRYING TO DRIVE HIM BACK.

Billy soars even higher with the wind, tantalizingly past the girl's outstretched arms. Then the wind changes and he spirals down to the ground, finding himself on the sidewalk in front of a building named The Crimson Towers. Billy almost gives up his mission, until he spots the red hat caught on a shrub near the entrance.

It is just the lead that Billy needs, in David Teague's new The Red Hat (Hyperion Books, 2015), and he carefully retrieves the red hat and runs into the building, heading for the top floor. where he and his mystery girl meet face to face at last.

This is a strange story of two wind-crossed friends, with an unusual talisman, a red hat, and a attraction between the two represented visually by the color red. Artist Antoinette Portis makes the most of this color motif, illustrating the story primarily in thick blackline, white, pale gray, and the blue of the sky, with contrasting accents of red in Billy's paper airplane, kite, and blanket, the door of the girl's apartment, and, of course, the hat. The quixotic wind is shown vividly in silvery swirls, lovely, yet malevolent, echoed, too, by the whirling sweep of the text across the page, but finally foiled at last with the help of the the iconic hat. Although the boy and girl portrayed seem too young to be seen as sweethearts, a Romeo and Juliet separated by two different worlds, the final page of the book does leave us with two words....

THE BEGINNING....

Of this non-hearts-and-flowers, perhaps Valentine story, School Library Journal says, "This dynamic, gorgeously rendered glimpse into the fledgling bond between two people demonstrates the power of persistence."

A Chapeau for All Seasons: I Had a Favorite Hat by Boni Ashburn

I HAD A FAVORITE HAT THAT WAS MY BESTEST HAT EVER.

I WORE IT AT THE BEACH. IT WAS FLIPPY AND FLOPPY.

But beach days don't last forever, and when the autumn leaves start to fall, Mom says it's time to put away summer things. But her daughter has other ideas.

I HUNG IT ON MY DOOR,
WAITING TO BE SO MUCH MORE....

Our crafty girl recognizes the hat has other possibilities and when October rolls around. she has an inspiration.

WITH A LITTLE OF THIS AND A LITTLE OF THAT....
... A HALLOWEEN WITCH HAT!

As the year goes by, the hat morphs into many styles. A few Christmas ornaments makes it a fine holiday concert chapeau, and some cute cut-out red hearts make it perfect for Valentine's day. It does double duty for playing dress-up with Maggie, and it's a natural for an Easter hat with a gauzy blue veil and a touch of daffodils--until Grandma appropriates it, declaring it perfect for her spring garden's scarecrow.

But then one day, the girl finds the scarecrow hat-less! Her hapless hat has been carried away by the breeze!

But luckily summer is coming and her friend Maggie points out that floppy sunhats are o-u-t of style this season.

"SHINY VISORS ARE IN!" SHE SAYS.

HMMM! Maybe with a little of this and....

Boni Ashburn's I Had a Favorite Hat (Abrams Books, 2015), with it pinkish cover and stylish theme is obviously aimed at the young female fashionista, a companion book to its popular predecessor, I Had a Favorite Dress, (see my review here) one which proves that our girl has learned a thing or two from her crafty (in more ways than one) Mom. Although this one is a natural as an activity starter for birthday or holiday parties for girls, there may be some future Christian Diors out there who will pick up some techniques for their careers in haute couture as well.

"The energetic and engaging illustrations, created using graphite, cut paper, watercolor, crayon, and PhotoShop, invite perusal," points out School Library Journal.

Crime and Punishment II: This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen

THIS IS NOT MY HAT.

I STOLE IT FROM A BIG FISH.

HE WAS SLEEPING WHEN I DID IT.

The narrator is a little fish, brazenly wearing a blue Derby, which he readily admits to swiping from a snoozing fish, who, the little fish optimistically opines, probably won't wake up any time soon. And if he does, he probably won't notice. And the hat didn't fit him anyway. And  the perpetrator is swimming rapidly toward a kelp forest, where the big fish will never find him.

Okay,  so there was an eyewitness to the crime. A little crab with big stalky eyes saw it all, but he has promised the larcenous little fish not to tell which way  he went. It is an almost perfect crime. Except....

Except that none of the thief's hopeful speculations are actually true. The big fish does wake up:, he does look up to check out his chapeau; the crab squeals like a stool pigeon; and the big fish is off to the perp's hideout in the swish of a fin.

Crime will out in Jon Klassen's just-published This Is Not My Hat (Candlewick, 2012), a worthy successor to his best-selling chapeau chase, I Want My Hat Back (E. B. White Read-Aloud Award. Picture Books) (see my review here). Again, Klassen's darkly droll tale is a high point in the picture book genre, with his spare text and simple but evocative illustrations complementing the text exquisitely. Klassen's character's eyes speak volumes, as the big fish looks up to where his hat should be even as the naive little malefactor is speculating that his victim won't even notice the hat snitch. The big fish's eyes narrow as the hunt for the culprit commences, and the crab's bulgy eyes need only look page right to put the pursuit of the perpetrator into motion--and the outcome of this crime and punishment saga is no longer in doubt. We know which fish is going to swim out of that seaweed wearing that hat.

With a text of so few, but such well-chosen words, Klassen's illustrations create the tension and the humor that makes this picture book a winner. An artist who can telegraph the outcome of a tale subtly but shrewdly with  no more than a pattern of bubbles is rare. As in his earlier headgear whodunnit, Klassen discretely lets the certain execution of justice take place off-page in a nod to the sensibilities of his young readers.

Receiving starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, School Library Journal, and Horn Book for  This Is Not My Hat, Klassen has the credentials to show that the success of his first book was no hat trick. A tip of the topper to a master of the art of the picture book.

Regifting: One Snowy Night by M. Christina Butler

THE COLD WIND AWOKE LITTLE HEDGEHOG FROM HIS DEEP WINTER SLEEP.

HE SHIVERED IN THE SNOW.

SUDDENLY, SOMETHING FELL FROM THE SKY.... THUD!

IT WAS A PRESENT AND IT HAD HIS NAME ON IT.

INSIDE WAS A RED WOOLLY HAT... HEDGEHOG SIZE!

It is an appropriate gift from Father Christmas, just the right size, except that Father Christmas failed to allow room for Hedgehog's quills. Little Hedgehog pulls it this way and that to try to fit in all of his prickles, and soon the little red hat is stretched all out of shape for a little hedgehog. What to do?

Then Little Hedgehog has an inspiration. Rabbit! He needs a red woolly hat too! Little Hedgehog wraps it up nicely, inscribes a gift tag to Rabbit and scurries over to leave it on his friend's doorstep.

But Little Hedgehog has forgotten about Rabbit's ears. The woolly hat fits his head, but not his long ears! Rabbit is frustrated, until he thinks of someone who does not have big, long ears to get in the way! Badger!

Rabbit re-wraps the present and drops it off at Badger's front door, feeling good about his largess. But Badger's little ears are completely swamped inside the thick woolly cap.

"I CAN'T USE THIS HAT. I CAN'T HEAR A THING!"

So off goes the regifted red hat, this time to Fox's house. Fox is foxy enough to figure out that he can make holes in the hat for his ears, and sets off through the snowy night, snug and warm. But what's that in the snow?

FOX DUG AND DUG. IT'S A SMALL, COLD HEDGEHOG.

"POOR LITTLE FELLOW."

Fox tucks the half-frozen Little Hedgehog inside the now well-stretched woolly hat and takes him home to warm up and continue his long winter sleep inside his now lovely warm red, woolly blanket.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS, LITTLE HEDGEHOG." BUT LITTLE HEDGEHOG WAS FAST ASLEEP.

What goes around comes around in M.Christina Butler's classic Touch-And-Feel One Snowy Night now available with its touchable red fleecy hat in an accessible board book format for the youngest readers. Sweet and simple, this one, paired with Fiona Watt's That's Not My Santa (Usborne Touchy-Feely) make great stocking stuffer choices for a child's first Christmas books.