Klassen manages to tell almost the whole story through subtle eye movements and the tilt of seaweed and air bubbles. The eyes have it in Klassen’s latest hat book (I WANT MY HAT BACK). Klassen combines spare text and art to deliver no small measure of laughs in another darkly comic haberdashery whodunit.Hats off! Klassen excels at using pictures to tell the parts of the story his unreliable narrators omit or evade. Who knew hat thievery was such a bottomless well? The simple, dramatic tension and macabre humor that’s right at a kid’s level of deviousness mesh splendidly with Klassen’s knack for tiny, telling details and knockout page turns. Klassen’s authorial debut, I WANT MY HAT BACK (2011), became one of the surprise picture-book hits of the year, and while it’s tempting to see this follow-up as a sequel, it’s really only related in its hat-theft theme, animal characters, deadpan humor, and a suggestively dark conclusion. This not-to-be-missed title will delight children again and again. Movement is indicated with a trail of small white bubbles. The black underwater provides the perfect background for the mostly gray-toned fish and seaweed while the monochromatic palette strips the artwork down to essential, yet exquisite design. Simplicity is key in both text and illustrations.
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review) This is, quite simply, an outstanding book-and that ain’t no fish tale. Whether puttering along with Little Tug on the surface or swimming with the fish in the dark below, we’re all in this water together. The negotiations between what grown-ups and children want, and between what adults are familiar with and children are still apprehending, provide the tension that makes children’s books possible. Any picture book needs to bridge the worlds of adult and child, whether they are the tucker and the tucked in or the experienced reader and the sounder-outer.
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