This Is Not My Hat

Jon Klassen (Candlewick, 2012)

Confession: I am in love Jon Klassen. But who isn't these days?

 

You remember, of course, last year's smash hit I Want My Hat Back.  This book is not quite a sequel, but it follows similar patterns. 

This raises the question: Was Jon Klassen a haberdasher in a previous life?

A little fish steals a tiny blue bowler off the head of a sleeping ... larger fish (forgive my ignorance of species names). This little fish -  perhaps a guppy, perhaps whatever kind of fish Finding Nemo was - is sure he'll get away. 

This fish has not read I Want My Hat Back.   

Nobody gets away with hat theft in a Klassen book. 

 

Nobody. 

Otter and Odder

Written by James Howe (the guy who wrote Bunnicula!) 

Illustrated by Chris Raschka (the guy who won the Caldecott last year!) 

 

An otter, searching for a snack, stumbles upon his soulmate.

Otter and fish, fish and otter. In love. Together. 

No matter what is being said about them in the pond (believe me, things are being said)

 

This is a story of acceptance and equality, of love and endurance. 

The loveliest 'happily ever after' I've read in a while.

Author of the Day: 

Frank Viva


Books:

Along a Long Road (2011)

A Trip To the Bottom of the World With Mouse (2012)



Frank Viva is an adventurer. At least, that's what his books lead us to believe. Bike rides through the city are epic journeys and epic journeys to Antarctica are not out of the ordinary.

 
 An established graphic designer, Viva broke into the world of children's books last year with his highly acclaimed Along a Long Road, which takes the reader on a bike ride through a very busy city.

  

A Trip to the Bottom of the World With Mouse was released this month by TOON Books, an impressive imprint of Candlewick that publishes high quality cartoons/graphic "novels" for young people. Seriously up there with McMullens on the imprint-coolness scale.

You could call his work 'retro', I guess. His use of colour and shape certainly recalls mid-century style. The typography is so well integrated with the artwork I could sing, but what else do you expect from a graphic designer?
(Font choices in picture books are so often distracting and detracting) .

The stories are simple, but it's really not the story you're meant to focus on. The images, the design of these books as a physical object, are what really get me.