He explains that he plans to hide where plants grow big and tall and are close together. When the small fish says, “And even if he does guess it was me,” Klassen illustrates this with a picture of him swimming off to the right side of the page.Īt this point, the story shifts to the small fish’s perspective. This suggests that he knows exactly who took his hat. The little fish says, “Even if the big fish notices that his hat is missing, he probably won’t know it was me who took it.” The author illustrates this by having a similar two-page spread as before except now the big fish has an expression on his face. Readers know this isn’t true because they know what will happen next: The big fish wakes up and notices immediately that his hat is missing. For example, when the small fish says “And even if he does wake up, he probably won’t notice that it’s gone,” we see an illustration of him looking at where his hat should be but not seeing it there. This introduces a recurring theme of dramatic irony, in which readers can see things that characters don’t. Throughout this book, he continually brags about how impressive he was for having stolen it (without getting caught) while thinking that his actions went unnoticed by anyone else.īut the small fish doesn’t realize that the big fish is about to wake up.

The smaller fish has no shame about stealing the hat, announcing on page one that “this hat is not mine” and claiming to have stolen it without waking up or noticing him (the big fish). 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. Literary journals like Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly gave high praise to This Is Not My Hat after its publication, making this one of few times that both awards were given to a single piece of literature in the same year. Both books are about animals stealing hats and the reaction of their victims, but This Is Not My Hat focuses on the animals who do the stealing. The book is similar to his earlier work I Want My Hat Back, but it has an entirely different perspective.

This Is Not My Hat is a popular picture book for children published in 2012 by Canadian Jon Klassen. 1-Page Summary of This Is Not My Hat Overall Summary

This hat is not mine