Tuesday Storytime: Hats

It's been a rough week so far - but storytime was great fun, with an attentive and lively small group.  Always perks me up to be around the kids.

Our theme this week was hats!

Don't Touch My Hat!
James Rumford
ISBN: 9780375837821

I dearly love this book.  I've used it for storytime more times than I can count.  Sheriff John keeps the peace in the town of Sunshine through the "magic" power of his ten-gallon-hat (think lucky jersey or requisite bedtime lovey) - at least, so he thinks.  One moonless night, trouble erupts, and he grabs a hat from the bedside table on his way out.  The text never lets on until the end, but the illustrations are super-funny - all of the grizzled outlaws and wild mountain men are just staring with their jaws dropped.  Fun western twang to read in, rollicking short story, great fun moral.  Love love love this book.


Zoe's Hats
Sharon Lane Holm
ISBN: 9781590780428

Really short and snappy.  Zoe is a French-cartoon-ish girl who obviously loves hats.  She has all kinds, and the illustrations are always Zoe's face showing different expressions, under a different sort of hat, with just the identifier below: "Red Hat"  "Blue Hat" or in the case of the colander "Gray, spotted, dotted hat."  Super short, super simple.


Hat
Paul Hoppe
ISBN: 9781599902470

This one is actually a bit sad on a meta level, but it's fun and the illustrations are nifty.  Very similar to Mercer Meyer's "Alligator" or "Monster" titles, or to Maurice Sendak.  Henry finds a lovely bright red hat on a bench, and promptly covets it, imagining all the amazing things he can do with this hat.  Until his mother reminds him that someone else might need that hat, and he begins to imagine other people in the situations he imagined, but sans hat, to astoundingly poignant cumulative impact, despite the humor of each scenario (a magician using a bucket instead of a hat pulls out a rotten fish skeleton, an explorer has been eaten by a crocodile - as evidenced by the person-shaped lump in the midsection of the croc.)  Really strangely sweet.



Next week, we're traveling!