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. 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. 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. The smaller fish has no shame about stealing the hat, announcing on the first page, “This hat is not mine. In this installment, the thief is a small fish and the victim is a much bigger fish. Unlike its predecessor, This Is Not My Hat is told from the perspective of the hat thief rather than the hat victim. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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