This is Not My Hat

This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen  is the 2013 Caldecott Award Book.  That means this book will have that shiny gold medal on the front.  That means this book has the best pictures/illustrations for children's books this year.  I love reading the award books.  Every year when the make the announcement in January I get a little excited.  However, I am a librarian so I think that is normal.  Since I love reading the books I'm going to tell you what I think of them.  Plus the lesson plan idea might help you plan some lessons.  

I am going to give this book a 5 out of 5 stars. Which is impressive, b/c I really don't like to throw the 5 stars out there for everything.  Sure, you may be thinking that of course the Caldecott Award book would get 5 stars b/c it won a big award, but let me clarify.  The Caldecott is for pictures, my rating includes the story.  This is Not My Hat has a simple story where the pictures help tell the story, and the pictures even help the reader, through the big fish's eyes, dig a little deeper into the story and express more of what the fish is feeling or thinking.  I gave this book 5 stars b/c the story is great, the pictures are great, and it has the potential to reach many age levels.

Amazon had the following book description:

"When a tiny fish shoots into view wearing a round blue topper (which happens to fit him perfectly), trouble could be following close behind. So it’s a good thing that enormous fish won’t wake up. And even if he does, it’s not like he’ll ever know what happened. . . . Visual humor swims to the fore as the best-selling Jon Klassen follows his breakout debut with another deadpan-funny tale." 

This really is a great book, and I think a teacher or librarian could use this for a lesson for a lot of different grades.  With the emotions that are expressed so simply in the enormous fish's eyes a teacher could brainstorm as a class a list of words to describe what the fish is thinking and/or feeling.  Then the teacher could have the students write the story adding the descriptive words the class brainstormed.  The teacher could have the students write the story as if someone couldn't see the pictures.  If you use the 6 traits of writing this could work for Ideas or Word Choice.