Children’s Book Sample

This book entitled I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen is a children’s picture book. It is a humorous story about a bear who has, clearly, lost his hat. He becomes discouraged after asking many friends if they’ve seen it and it is still no where to be found. Or is it?

I Want My Hat Back is a beautiful example of both type and image. The illustrations are carefully crafted using Chinese ink and digital rendering giving rich, unique texture to the characters. The typeface used is New Century Schoolbook. And of course, what makes it even better is that it is published by Candlewick Press!

I really enjoy the simplicity of the illustrations and how Klassen effectively uses the space on each page. As the bear meets each character in search of his hat there is a still moment of brief conversation but when he remembers seeing his hat there is suddenly a frantic movement of the wide-eyed bear running back from where he came, past all his friends until he reaches the rabbit. Klassen’s use of the dramatic red background and the bear’s wide-eyed expression when he realizes he has seen his hat is very powerful. The type is also very effective due to the typeface chosen and the size. Being a story almost completely of dialogue, Klassen simply assigns black text to the bear and other colors to signify the speech of the other characters, taking care of the “he/she said” and the congestion of quotation marks.

Enjoy!