Rosie's Hat

Author: Julia Donaldson
Illustrator: Anna Currey
Publisher: Macmillian's Children's Books, 2005


Here's a book with a great longevity; enjoyed from the age of 2 years to 7 years in our house. At 2 years, children enjoy the onomatopoeia in this book, with capitalised noisy words used to express the story; 'PATTER, PATTER! SQUEAK, SQUEAK!' At 3-5 year children start to understand that the hat in the story, is instrumental to all the characters, somewhere to hide for a mouse, used to build sandcastles for some boys, becoming a nest for some birds. From 5-7 years children enjoy the cyclical journey the hat makes, eventually being returned to its rightful owner, Rosie. From about four years children come to understand that Rosie ages and becomes the firefighter, and it's a lovely moment to talk about,  this understanding of generation, moving on, growing up, but loved items from childhood, and memories, still being there. Julia Donaldson revisits this theme latterly with her beautifully sensitive book, Paper Dolls. 

Anna Currey's watercolour and pen illustrations in Rosie's Hat are very soft and flowing; they capture the ebb of the wind and waves nicely, supporting the theme of 'coming and going'.  I also like that Currey plays with the 'in/consequential', so for example, the seagulls eating the fisherman's lunch, Rosie and her parents in the background of the beach scenes searching for her hat and leaving the beach. The illustrations also use character consistency, the fisherman, for examaple, later returning to the beach with his grandchildren, taking the photo of Rosie and her hat, and her loaning her firefighter hat to a child, to again stimulate this pattern of coming and going. 

This book reads aloud well, and its quiet in nature, soft and lilting, so very calming and gentle at bedtime. The story is also soothing; Rosie looses her hat accidentally, on a sudden fateful breeze, but is reunited fortuitously with her hat, though by this point she has grown and found her path in life, having her own firefighters hat. This, like in Paper Dolls, is a nice metaphor for many possible themes and opening for discussion with children, about bereavement, memories, loss, and simply moving forward after painful moments. 

Hoot

Author and Illustrator: Jane Hissey
Publisher: Hutchinson's Children's Books 1996, reprinted by Scribblers 2013

My three year old daughter has developed a fear of 'Old Brown' (the owl in Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin). She was telling me today that she doesn't like owls. We got this book out as some owl therapy. 'Hoot' tells the story of a group of cuddly toys in bed at night, who wake to hear an unexplained noise. As the toys ponder what the noise might be, odd socks appear around the room and a soft toy owl in a blue apron flies down from the top of the cupboard. The innovative owl explains that her nest of socks has fallen from the cupboard, 
so the other toys help her to raise a new bobble hat nest into the air. 

This is a classic Jane Hissey book; soft quiet illustrations with lots of depth and a narrative about kindness and working together. Hissey's work seems if it's time in some respects, sat alongside the more garish, loud children's literature of the 2010s, where subplots  are common ( one to please, entertain the parents, another for the children). Hissey's work is more sincere and gag -free; it speaks to the imagination of children so beautifully. There's no exposition as to why the toys 'come to life' , they are just 'real', and I love that. The toys adventure through their days, using props from daily life in a resourceful way. In the process, the answers to everyday phenomena are realised, 'why do we always have so many odd socks lying around?' for example. 

Hoot is a book that will captivate the 3-5 year old and Jane Hissey's Old Bear stories in general model imaginative play beautifully, highly recommended.