BIBLIOGRAPHY
Klassen, Jon. 2012. THIS IS NOT MY HAT. Somerville, MA: Candlewick. ISBN 9780763655990
PLOT SUMMARY
PLOT SUMMARY
A little fish has stolen a hat from a large fish. As this little fish tells his tale and makes
his run to freedom, the large fish begins the search for his missing hat. Two
fish swim into the tall plants, and only one swims out.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
The beauty of this story lies in the irony between the short, simple
sentences of the fish’s thoughts, “This hat is not mine. I just stole it” with the bold, expressive
illustrations showing what is actually happening. What blows my mind is that Klassen is able to
use simplicity to create such a complex and meaningful tale.
Klassen uses very
short sentences along with very large font for this story. The simplicity of his words and the tone of
his first person narrator show the train of thought of the thief AND make it easy
for young children to understand; it had my young daughter cracking up as I
read to her.
Klassen’s illustrations only show muted browns, reds, grays,
and black, but this pulls the reader in to focus on the details. He emphasizes the difference in the size of
the fish by having the big fish take up two pages every time he shows up and
always fitting the little fish on one side.
In each illustration, Klassen uses very subtle signals (a squinted eye,
a pointing claw, a trail of white bubbles) to tell a story that contradicts the
words on the page. The reader can’t help but giggle and laugh throughout the
story.
Instead of forcing a lesson, the ending of the story leaves
the reader to determine the fate of the little fish thief themselves, so
children can draw their own conclusions about the outcome of taking what is not
ours.
AWARDS AND REVIEWS
*Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book
*New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of
the Year
*#1 New York Times Bestseller
*Amazon Best Books of the Year 2012
*The Horn Book review: “Darkly hilarious.”
*School Library Journal:
“This not-to-be-missed title will delight children again and again.”
CONNECTIONS
*This book will work well to teach children a lesson about stealing.
*Other hat books by the author: I WANT MY HAT BACK and WE FOUND A HAT
*More books illustrated by Jon Klassen:
HOUSE HELD UP BY TREES by Ted Kooser
EXTRA YARN by Mac Barnett
Photos taken from: https://www.amazon.com/Books-Jon-Klassen/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AJon%20Klassen
Photos taken from: https://www.amazon.com/Books-Jon-Klassen/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AJon%20Klassen
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