I WANT MY HAT BACK

Author and illustrator: Jon Klassen 
Publisher: Walker Books, 2011

If anything, this book is an education in effective use of capitalisation as a way 'to shout'. Jon Klassen's work is dead pan dry, I always find myself reading this with my eyebrows raised. It's the story of a bear looking for a missing hat, only he's oblivious to the fact he's seen the thief of the hat, wearing the hat and clearly lying. He then lies himself to conceal his own wrongdoing. 
The story and punch line work much better if each character is read with a funny accent, so the snake in our version has a lisp, the bear is bumbling, slow and has a low deep voice. Read the rabbit in a quick high pitched voice, and the story becomes much funnier. 
The book is very repetitive and simple, so seems at first aimed at very young children ( the under 3s). However, the twist in the story ( the rabbit gets eaten!), is black comedy and so is lost of 3.5 year old Eddie. At 5 and 7 however, her brothers find the story side splittiingly funny and request it is read twice in every sitting. Jon Klassen has managed to produce a very different type of children's book here, it's drole and yet simple, economic with words but generous in fun and humour. We really love this one. 

Here's a fantastic reading of this book I've found, read by George Del Barrio:
I Want My Hat Back from The Vanderbilt Republic on Vimeo.

Goodnight Moon

Author: Margaret Wise Brown

Illustrator: Clement Hurd
Publisher: Originally published in 1947, reprinted in 2012 Macmillian Children's Books

Goodnight Moon is heralded as a classic of North American children's literature. I became familiar with the book from a language blog I read many years ago, in which the poem had been translated into Polish. Having not initially read the poem in English, it made so much more 'sense' in the English translation and I grew to love it (and yet this poem makes very little 'sense' at all). Having scribbled the lyrics of Goodnight Moon down from the language blog, I actually read it aloud to Alf and Bert when they were little from a scrap of paper. It became a ritual at bedtime to read this poem, which is of course, what Goodnight Moon is all about (the anthropomorphic bunny's bedtime routine). 

Three years on and having purchased the board book version, this book remains consistently part of the bedtime routine in that one of my children (at least) will always, choose this to read out to their baby brother. The poem is rhythmic and surreal. Illustrator Clement Hurd has used bold psychedelic orange and green alongside black silhouette and shadow, making the illustrations quite haunting, ethereal. 

Goodnight Moon seems to be enjoying a new / renewed fame in the UK at the moment, as I've seen it on sale in art galleries and being pushed in more highend book shops lately. I assume this is because it is deemed a young children's 'classic' and is easily marketable as an American cult classic at that. I would like to see  The Quangle Wangle's Hat be reinvented like this, in the same way, as to me it's tantamount to Goodnight Moon in its ethereal nature and has the same iconic pictorials. 

Loved by my older children as an easy- read to the baby each night, Goodnight Moon is perfectedly pitched at the 1-2 year age range. It holds their attention in a rather hynoptic way, with its duo-toned block pictures, such as the lamp, and use of black and white, such as the house. I'm sure I've read before that babies under 4 months only see in this basic colour wheel, so again Goodnight Moon is ideal for the very youngest of bookworms and their parents.
In all, this is a really lovely, dreamy, familiar, ritualistic read, and it always puts a neat full stop on the night.