The cover of this children’s picture book features a child wearing a crazy orange winter hat standing in front of a snowy scene. Just perfect for the upcoming holiday season, I thought as I picked it off the library shelf.
Each page features a different variety of hat and tells the reason we would want to wear it, all in cute rhyme. The characters are cute and engaging, making the pictures a delight to look at.
What came as a pleasant surprise was the fact that not only does this book discuss different types of hat and why we wear them, but it features individuals from history who are famous for their hats.
We learn that artist Francisco de Goya made a special hat with candles around the brim so he could paint at night and see what he was working on.
Igor Stravinsky owned a green beret that, they say, never left his head. He even slept with it on.
Carmen Miranda used to be a hat maker in South America before becoming a movie star. That would explain the creativity behind her outfits.
Abraham Lincoln carried documents inside his tall stovepipe hat.
Princess Isabelle of Bavaria started the whole pointy-princess-hat craze which still continues to this day as little girls play dress-up.
Louis Comte was the first magician ever to perform the pulling-a-rabbit-out-of-a-hat trick.
Legend has it that Johnny Appleseed wore a cooking pot on his head for a hat.
On and on the book goes, giving us interesting tidbits from history about hats, their owners, and their uses. The very first and last pages of the book list the historical characters and a brief tidbit about them, creating a tie-in between the fiction and the nonfiction. I found the book surprisingly entertaining and enlightening.
(This book was published by Simon and Schuster in 2004 and was illustrated by Geraldo Valerio.)
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