This Is Not My Hat

This Is Not My Hat is a very popular and critically-acclaimed children’s picture book published in 2012 by Canadian author and illustrator, Jon Klassen. The book is a follow-up—or, better yet, a “spiritual sequel” of sorts—to a children’s book published just a year earlier by Klassen titled I Want My Hat Back. While both books tell the story of a small animal who steals a hat from a larger one, Klassen flips the perspective from that of the victim in I Want My Hat Back to that of the perpetrator in This Is Not My Hat. Literary periodicals like Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, both of which dole out high praise to children’s lit on none but the rarest occasions, honored This Is Not My Hat with unanimously and unequivocally positive reviews. The following year, Klassen made history as the first author ever to win both the Caldecott Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal in the same year for the same work. This was quite the honor for Klassen, given that the Caldecott Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal are the most prestigious awards for children’s book illustrations in the United States and Great Britain, respectively.

Unlike its predecessor, This Is Not My Hat is told from the perspective of the hat thief rather than the hat victim. In this installment, the thief is a small fish and the victim is a much bigger fish. The smaller fish has no shame about stealing the hat, announcing on the first page, “This hat is not mine. I just stole it.” In fact, throughout the book, the small fish continually brags about how impressive he is for having stolen the hat without the bigger fish even realizing it (or so the small fish thinks). “I stole it from a big fish,” the protagonist announces on the next page. “He was asleep when I did it. And he probably won’t wake up for a long time.”

But just as the small fish says this, the big fish does in fact wake up. This introduces a recurrent theme of dramatic irony, wherein the reader sees that everything the little fish brags about is, unbeknownst to the little fish, a lie. For example, next the small fish says, “And even if he does wake up, he probably won’t notice that it’s gone.” On this page, we see the same picture of the big fish as in the one before, except with a subtle change: the fish’s eyes are pointed up at where his hat should be. This reveals to the reader that, contrary to what the little fish claims, the big fish notices almost immediately that his hat is missing.



Next, the little fish says, “And even if he does notice that it’s gone, he probably won’t know it was me who took it.” To accompany this line, Klassen depicts the big fish again in a similar two-page spread as the previous two pages except that now the fish has a knowing look on his face, as if to suggest that he knows exactly who took his hat. And fittingly, when the small fish says, “And even if he does guess it was me, he won’t know where I am going.” Klassen depicts the fish swimming off to the right side of the page.

At this juncture, the book shifts more to the little fish’s direct perspective as he addresses the audience and explains where he plans to hide from the fish. Even though the reader no longer sees what the big fish is doing, the previous pages establish that the big fish already knows the small fish’s plans and that he will not be fooled by the small fish’s attempts to hide “where the plants grow big and tall and close together.” The small fish adds, “It is very hard to see in there. Nobody will ever find me.”

On his way to the secret spot with the tall, close plants, the little fish catches a little orange crab watching him swim by. The little fish is confident that the crab will not reveal the little fish’s whereabouts because “he said he wouldn’t tell anyone which way I went.” It is interesting that the little fish is so trusting of other creatures when he himself has just committed a very dishonest act. And, as before, the little fish is completely wrong. In the next frame, when the fish says, “So I am not worried about that,” Klassen displays the crab pointing to show the big fish which direction the little fish is hiding.



The next line is the closest thing in Klassen’s book to an examination of morality. The little fish says: “I know it’s wrong to steal a hat. I know it does not belong to me. But I am going to keep it. It was too small for him anyway. It fits me just right.” But in the end, the little fish is punished for his selfishness. The big fish locates him and retrieves his hat back. This happens “off-page,” so it is difficult to know if the bigger fish simply took his hat back, or—as bigger fish are wont to do—he ate the little fish.

In any case, This Is Not My Hat is a fascinating children’s book in that it allows young readers to empathize with a thief, even if the final moral statement is a simple one: crime doesn’t pay.