I Want My Hat Back
The bear's hat is gone, and he wants it back. Patiently and politely, he asks the animals he comes across, one by one, whether they have seen it. Each animal says no, some more elaborately than others. But just as the bear begins to despair, a deer comes by and asks a simple question that sparks the bear's memory and renews his search with a vengeance. A picture-book morality play about dishonesty.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
5mentions
5people
2015–2026years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Tangential: the favicon for dustri.org is from a really delightful (and hilariously dark) children's book called "I Want My Hat Back" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Want_My_Hat_Back
- > The most successful exception I've seen are books by Joe Klassen (of I Want My Hat fame)...
If you haven't read it The Dark[1] (his collaboration with Lemony Snicket) is also great; my kids absolutely love the voices I do for the animals in I Want My Hat Back and for the titular Dark.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Bccb-Ribbon-Picture-Awards/dp/03...
- As a father of young kids, I cannot recommend John Klassen's "Hat" picture books enough:
I Want My Hat Back
This Is Not My Hat
We Found A Hat
The Rock From The Sky
They're beautiful exercises in minimal, precision watercolor. They're written with delightful economy, and have a rather Dahlian sense of justice and consequences.
He wrote them all within the last twelve years, IIRC.
For older kids, Pax (illustrated by Mr. Klassen in the edition we picked up) is a lovely piece of writing, vaguely like a cross between My Side Of The Mountain and Old Yeller, but less tragic than Old Yeller, with a deftly-handled thread about emotional awareness and responsibility for one's own choices woven throughout.
Oh, and the How To Train Your Dragon books, by Cressida Cowell, are wonderful, hilarious pieces of work about self-discovery, loyalty, friendship, and the hard, slow struggle to achieve mastery and skill in a world where people expect you to be something rather different than you are. Vastly, vastly better than the popular movies loosely inspired by them, and quite different - closer to a child-friendly Hitchhiker's Guide than the Hero's Journey of the films.
Great new classics are still being written - it's just that the winnowing function of passing decades hasn't yet run its course, so they're harder to find.
- Here are a few of my suggestions.
Picture books for young children- We really enjoyed I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat, and "Sam and Dave Dig a Hole" written by Jon Klassen and illustrated by Mac Bennet.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Read-Aloud-Award-Picture-Book...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Not-Hat-Jon-Klassen/dp/1406353...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sam-Dave-Dig-Hole-Barnett/dp/140636...
Books (with some illustration) for older readers- We're enjoying The Saga of Erik the Viking by Terry Jones and illustrated by Michael Foreman.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Saga-Erik-Viking-Puffin-Books/dp/01...
- And it's absolutely worth reading beyond that.
I LOLed at this bit:
"I do not eat breakfast. Please do not ask me any questions about what I will do breakfast. Please just do not bring it up."
Reminds me of a book I read to my two year old called "I want my hat back".
