It isn’t until you get to the final coup de grace that you realize that the bear is looking at you once more.Īs I mentioned before, Mr. Now his eyes, and the eyes of the other characters, are looking at one another. All that changes the instant the bear lies on the ground, despairing of ever finding his hat again. For most of the spreads the bear and other animals are looking right at you. And watch how the eyes work in this book. Klassen can do more with the set of this bear’s head than most artists do with entire bodies. That is because here, being expressionless isn’t just the name of the game, it’s a comedic technique. So it will be with great interest that I watch the critical reception of I Want My Hat Back. Other folks felt it made the cats too cold and static. Here you had a book where felines engage in a variety of different dances, yet their faces retain the exact same universal look of deep concentration. What makes it stand out, however, is how beautifully put together it all is.Ī criticism leveled at the aforementioned Cats’ Night Out involved the expressionless faces of Klassen’s kitties. Painted with Chinese ink and digital art, Klassen’s book falls into that growing category of subversive picture books out there. And when the bear realizes the true culprit there will be a price to pay. The rabbit, for the record, refuses to acknowledge having seen the hat in spite of the fact that he appears to be wearing it.

To find it he questions a variety of woodland creatures including a fox, a frog, a turtle, a possum, a dear, a snake and a rabbit. I mean, I thought the man was grand, but could he tell a story? Well, turns out I was right about the fact that his art is magnificent and now, with the release of his first author/illustrator picture book I Want My Hat Back, Klassen shows once and for all that his storytelling talents match his illustration technique pound for pound.Ī bear has lost his hat.

I was fairly certain he might at some point, and I wasn’t sure I’d be looking forward to it. Still and all, until now he hadn’t illustrated his own book. I hardly even noticed that he was the same guy behind the pictures found in The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood. And frankly I just thought it contained some of the slickest art I’d seen in a picture book in a long while. I knew it! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! When Caroline Stutson’s Cats’ Night Out was released by Simon & Schuster in 2010 it contained art by an animator going by the moniker of Jon Klassen.

I want my hat back