- Picture Books
- Ages 3–7
- Comedy
This Is Not My Hat
Book 2 of 3 in Hat TrilogyView the full series
A small fish steals a hat from a large sleeping fish and narrates all the reasons it definitely won't get caught, while we watch the large fish slowly, silently follow. Jon Klassen's Caldecott Medal winner is a masterclass in dramatic irony and the art of not showing what happens next.
- Best for3–7
- FormatPicture
- Length40 pp
- Read aloud~8 min
The vibe
What it’s like.
Style
- Conversational
Tone
- Funny
- Dark
- Suspenseful
- Absurdist
Themes
Experience meters
What’s it about?
The story.
A small fish is wearing a hat that does not belong to it. It knows this. But the hat fits, and the big fish it came from was asleep, and probably won't even notice. The small fish swims confidently toward the deep dark plants where no one will find it, narrating cheerfully while behind it, barely visible, the big fish opens its eyes and begins to follow. Jon Klassen tells the whole story twice: once in the sparse, matter-of-fact text (the small fish's confident internal monologue), and once in the illustrations (which show, in calm sequential images, that every one of the small fish's reassurances is wrong). The ending, big fish emerging from the reeds, hat back on head, small fish not visible, is left entirely to the reader's imagination. Winner of the Caldecott Medal 2013. Best read aloud slowly, with attention to the pictures.
Fit check
Right for your child?
Where it lands by age
- 1
- 3
- 5
- 7
- 9
- 11
- 13
- Best fit · 3–7
- Read aloud · 3–10
- Independent · 5–7
Prose load
Minimal
Visual support
Very high
Reluctant-reader friendly
Very
Read-aloud quality
Excellent
Works well for
- Reading aloud
- Reading together
- Reluctant readers
Preview before sharing if a child is sensitive to: death of character.
Bedtime suitability
2 / 5 · Better outside bedtime
Sensitive-child
3 / 5 · Mostly fine
Graphic intensity
3 / 5 · Some
Best for
- Dark humour
- Dramatic irony
- Picture book adults love
- Gift book
Avoid if
- Very sensitive to death
In the classroom
How it works in school.
Jon Klassen's deadpan, darkly funny hat books — superb read-alouds whose sly gaps make them brilliant for inference and talk about right and wrong.
A book children love that happens to support school — never a stand-in for the texts a class is taught with. Reviewed for the classroom · June 2026.
Why it lands
Why they love it.
Why kids love it
The specific delight is the picture-text gap — the small fish narrating cheerful reasons it won't be caught, while the pictures calmly show every reassurance being wrong. A four-year-old gets one of the funniest, most quietly menacing picture books ever made for them. The ending happens off the page.
- Trickery and cleverness
- Surviving danger
Why parents love it
The Caldecott-medal Klassen — the picture-text gap doing all the work, the ending left entirely to the reader. Best read aloud slowly, with attention to the illustrations. A masterclass in dramatic irony for under-fives.
- Shared humour
- Great writing
- Quick to read
In the series
Hat Trilogy.
3 books · open the series →
About the author & illustrator
Jon Klassen.
If you liked this
Three ways out of this book.
If you liked this, try…
Lateral matches. Same shelf, different texture.
Come into this from…
Easier or preparing reads — perfect lead-ins.
Where to go next…
Escalation reads — a step up in scale, silliness, or stakes.
More like this…
Books that share themes and topics with this one.
Where you’ll find it
On these reading lists.
Buy or borrow
Pick up a copy.
- Bookshop.org ↗
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- Amazon UK ↗
- Hive ↗
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