Hats off, to Klassen

A lesson in 3-act plot structure for picture books

SP’s current favourite bedtime story is the last in Jon Klassen’s famous Hat trilogy, viz. “We Found a Hat”. It’s about a pair of friends who find a hat together and decide to walk away from it as there is only one. One friend secretly struggles with this noble decision but is eventually reconciled to it by the other’s generosity of spirit.

Profound sentiments, I think, but made accessible to our 4- year-old by humour and the simple setting. The latter is a desert rock with tantalizing view of the 10-gallon hat. The morally less-steadfast tortoise sneaks on and off the symbolic rock, where the other sleeps with a clear conscience. ​ ​

SP gets the sub text: that one tortoise plans to snaffle the hat; that his friend’s generous dream shames him into doing the right thing. Like the best lessons in morality, this is never explicitly stated. Instead Klassen writes: 
“I am dreaming I have a hat. 
It looks very good on me. 
You are also there.
You also have a hat.
It looks very good on you too.” ​

We Found a Hat
Written and illustrated by Jon Klassen
​Walker Books 2016.

Sanctimony avoided with deadpan humour

Thereafter, the pictures do the work. In the final spread two little tortoises in ten-gallon hats drift side by side up into a night sky.

There’s not a whiff of sanctimony thanks to Klassen’s signature deadpan humour. And, I suggest, what the New York Times called his “poetic restraint”? I’m saying nuffin’, but you’ll see an example on the spread where the only text is “Nothing.” This page cracks SP up.

Structure
Klassen’s arrangement of the picture book into 3 parts: “Finding the Hat”, “Watching the Sunset”, and “Going to Sleep”, echoes the classic 3-Act plot structure. “Finding the Hat” is Act 1– an inciting incident: 2 tortoises find one hat, have second thoughts about taking it as a hat can’t be shared.

Act 11, an obstacle to harmony – dodgy tortoise is conflicted (shown simply by the angle of his eyeballs. Genius!) Obstacle two, he fibs. The action continues to rise (Klassen’s “Going to Sleep”) when dodgy tortoise sneaks back to the hat. The Act III climax occurs when Dodgy learns of his friend’s generous dream and settles down beside him… hat-free.  So, three acts following the Exposition, Conflict, Rising Action, Falling Action structure. (See template.) 

What did I learn from this top-class story:

• The best way to do sub-text for non-readers is visually.
• Less is more, especially when writing morality. Avoid sanctimony by saying less. Say it humorously, if possible. 

'We Found a Hat' written and illustrated by Jon Klassen

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P.S. When reading this story I was struck by how odd it would seem for a San audience. Anyone who found an abandoned hat in the Kalahari would immediately don it, until a friend admired it, whereupon it would be gifted to them. And so on and so on, until everyone in the group who liked/needed a hat got a chance to wear it. Just goes to show that even the best picture books might not work in other cultures.